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Literary Appreciations 

LITTLE LIFE STOEIES 


AMANDA JANE SMILEY 









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LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 










LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 

LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


BY 


AMANDA JANE SMILEY 


“To become one with the good, 
generous and true, is to become, 
in a measure, good, generous and 
true ourselves .”—Thomas Arnold. 


LAFAYETTE, INDIANA 

CENTRAL EDITORIAL BUREAU 




19 0 8 



» 


UBRARYot CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC r 1308 

Copyright Entry 
CUSS CU XXc. No, 




Copyright, 1908, by Amanda Jane Smiley. 






QJn 

MY FATHER AND MOTHER 
AND COUSIN M. M. V. 


“Were I so tall to reach the pole, 

Or grasp the ocean with my span, 

1 must be measured by my soul: 

The mind’s the standard of the man.” 

—Dr. I. Watts. 


PREFACE 


EXPERIENCE in school work has shown the writer the need, 
particularly in rural districts where there is no access to public 
libraries, of such a book as is here presented, this need being 
greatest in the seventh and eighth years. In this little book there 
is offered no pretense at complete biography. Its object is simply 
to give the pupil some facts that will interest him in the subjects 
of these short sketches, in order that he may be lured to a study, 
in the original, of something more substantial. Care has been 
taken in determining dates, and all related incidents are authen¬ 
ticated, none invented. A few of the selections here given are to 
be found in the School Readers; they are repeated because their 
value in school work warrants this recognition. 

With acknowledgments to the friends who have assisted in 
this work, and with a hope that its results will reward the effort 
taken, this book is sent out on its mission to the boys and girls who 
find pleasure in the beautiful as expressed in the works of great 
men. A. J. S. 


Lafayette, Ind., October, 1908. 



CONTENTS 


I William Cullen Bryant - - - - 15 

II Washington Irving - - - - - 17 

III Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - - - 20 

IV Thomas Gray ------ 23 

V William Shakespeare - - - - 25 

VI Alfred Lord Tennyson - - - - 29 

VII Ralph Waldo Emerson - - - - - 32 

VIII Victor Marie Hugo ----- 34 

IX Oliver Goldsmith - - - - 38 

X Abraham Lincoln ----- 42 

XI John Keats.45 

XII William Wordsworth - .- - - 47 

‘ XIII Robert Burns.51 

XIV Sir Walter Scott.55 

XV George Gordon Lord Byron - - - 60 

XVI Nathaniel Hawthorne - - - - 64 

XVII John Greenleaf Whittier - - - 67 

XVIII Edgar Allan Poe.70 

XIX Oliver Wendell Holmes - - - 74 

XX Charles Dickens - - - - - 77 

XXI Robert Browning - - - - - 81 

XXII James Russell Lowell 84 

XXIII Sidney Lanier - - - - - - 87 

XXIV James Whitcomb Riley 89 

XXV Rudyard Kipling.93 


“ Go, little booke, God send thee good passage, 
And specially let this be thy prayer, 

Unto them all that thee will read or hear, 
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, 
Thee to correct in any part or all.” 


—Chaucer. 


INTRODUCTION 


IN THE GREAT WORLD ABOUT US, teeming with 
numberless objects of fascinating interest, none is so inspiring as 
the human being with his aspirations, his struggles, his defeats, his 
successes. The story of a human life is the absorbing story which 
appeals to every one who has the power to think, to feel, to will. 
What men and women have tried to do, what they have done, 
what they have been the means of helping others to do—all these 
things have an abiding interest for every boy and girl following 
the well-worn ways of everyday life. The great songs and 
stories, treasured by the generations of people as they come and 
go, are the songs and stories of men and women who have touched 
the heights and depths of human experience, and have simply told 
what life has revealed to them. What they have been able to be¬ 
come has found expression in their work. 

No one is likely to become greater than his ideal hero, but 
sometimes to learn that one who has been thought of as having 
been free from the ordinary trials of life, has had many things to 
overcome, has had weakness as well as strength in his character, 
to find that weakness and temptation do not belong alone to the 
ordinary human being, but are but a part of the common lot of 
all, is an encouragement to strive the harder because achievement 
seems the more possible. 

Biography then is of vital interest in connection with the 
study of literature. What the man really is, is revealed in what 


he has written, yet who he was, where he lived, when he lived, 
what were his opportunities—all these things are helps in under¬ 
standing his message. There is nothing insignificant in any life 
whatsoever, but in the life that has left its imprint upon the world 
in some special way there is special significance. 

These little life stories have a definite purpose, which will 
be the better served as the reader is influenced to study the fuller 
biographies of these great ones, and also is inspired to become a 
real companion of these through an ever growing knowledge of 
what they have written. 


Emma Mont McRae. 


September, 1908. 



LITTLE LIFE STORIES 















LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


15 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


ILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, our nature poet, 
was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, Novem¬ 
ber 3, 1 794, and died in New York City, June 12, 
1878. He is buried at Roslyn, Long Island. 
Bryant was of Puritan ancestry, being a direct 
descendant of John Alden of Mayflower fame. He was born 
and reared under strict Puritanical discipline. His father was a 
scholar and legislator and possessed an excellent library, of which 
his son even in his early years made good use. 

It is said that he knew all his letters when but eighteen 
months old, could read well before he was four, and wrote good 
poetry at ten. He entered Williams College when sixteen and 
distinguished himself in language and in literary study. Owing to 
financial circumstances, however, he never completed his college 
course. He studied law and in 1815 was admitted to the bar. 









16 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


He practiced law with some success. It is not surprising that he 
inclined more to literature, for it is as a poet that he is known best. 

Everything in nature meant much to Bryant. The flower, 
the rainbow, the stream, the mountain, and the bird all told 
him something. Washington Irving said of him that his grand 
merit is his nationality and his power of painting the American 
landscape, especially in its wild, solitary, and magnificent forms. 

His masterpiece, Thanatopsis , written when he was only 
eighteen, is a wonderful poem. In this poem Bryant’s language is 
sublime and majestic, and admirably adapted to his theme. He 
seemingly clusters beautiful thoughts round a gloomy subject, much 
as flowers are used to soften the harshness of the grave. 

“The hills. 

Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 

The venerable woods; rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks, 

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, 

Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— 

Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man!” 

It is possible that the environment of Bryant’s home in 
Western Massachusetts suggested many of these beautiful lines. 

To a Waterfowl is probably the most quoted of all Bryant’s 
poems. It is a lyric of exceptional beauty, teaching the guidance 
of the Divine Power. Bryant in this poem sympathizes with the 
real freedom of the waterfowl and so loses himself as to rejoice in 
his own idealized freedom. 

“He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 

In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright.” 

Bryant was without humor or warmth of passion, but he is 
truly American, pure and reverential. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


17 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 



ASHINGTON IRVING was born in New York 
City, April 3, 1783, and died at his beautiful 
Sunnyside home on the Hudson, November 28, 
1 859. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. 
A simple marble slab, inscribed with the name 
Washington Irving and the date of his birth and death, marks 
his grave. 

His parents came from Great Britain. He was named for 
“the Father of his country” and was the first American writer to 
gain marked recognition in Europe. Irving acquired most of his 
education in travel. His father had planned for Washington to 
follow the legal profession, but his health interfered and he was 
sent to Rome. After he returned to the United States he was ad¬ 
mitted to the bar in New York. He preferred literary to legal 
work and soon gave up his law practice. 

Salmagundi , a satirical miscellany, was his first literary 
effort. This was followed by Knickerbocker's History of Nero 
York • In this humorous history of New York, Irving embodies 


2 





18 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


the traditions and quaint customs of the old Dutch families. It is 
extremely funny and original and, while it is not his most finished 
work, it has caused much hearty and genuine laughter. 

Irving’s long residence in Madrid, Spain, where he was sent 
as United States ambassador, furnished him much of the material 
for his Life of Columbus, Alhambra, and Moorish Chronicles. 
His Sketch Book is probably his best work. This book contains 
materials mostly gotten in his travels. Stratford-on-Avon and 
Westminster Abbey are beautifully described, the sketches show¬ 
ing the author’s keen observation and genial interest. 

Following is his description of the organ at Westminster: 

“Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the 
ear, falling with doubled and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as 
it were, huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and 
grandeur accord with this mighty building! With what pomp do 
they swell through its vast vaults, and breathe their awful har¬ 
mony through these caves of death, and make the silent sepulchre 
vocal! And now they rise in triumph and acclamation, heaving 
higher and higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on 
sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of the choir 
break out into sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft, and 
warble along the roof, and seem to play about these lofty vaults 
like the pure airs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its 
thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it 
forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What solemn, 
sweeping concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful 
—it fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls—the ear 
is stunned—the senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding 
up in full jubilee—it is rising from the earth to heaven—the 
very soul seems rapt away and floated upwards on this swelling 
tide of harmony!” 

While Washington Irving was a humorist, he had also a 
sentimental side. The Broken Heart is a good example of his 
pathos. 

“Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature 
leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love 
is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the 
intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space 
in the world’s thought, and dominion over his fellow-men. But 
a woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart 
is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is 
there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth 
her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the 
traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless— 
for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.” 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


19 


Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, selec¬ 
tions from the Sketch Book , are two purely American stories. The 
character of good-natured old Rip, and the stormy scenes both 
outside and inside his home, are as familiar to the schoolboy and 
girl as is our national hymn. Probably no other piece of Ameri¬ 
can literature has been more thoroughly enjoyed. 

“Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, 
of foolish, well oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat 
white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought 
or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a 
pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in 
perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his 
ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was 
bringing on his family.” 

* * * * 

“Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years 
of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, 
and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with 
constant use.” 


* * * * 

* 

'‘Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his 
only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and the 
clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into 
the woods.” 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is also widely read. Irving’s 
picture of Ichabod Crane is always amusing. 

“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, 
long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, 
feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame 
most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, 
with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, 
so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle 
neck, to tell which way the wind blew.” 

While we cannot classify Washington Irving with the great 
writers, he was truly one whose works can soothe and charm. 


20 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

ENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was 
born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. He 
died at his home, The Craigie House , in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, March 24, 1882, and is buried in 
Mt. Auburn. A bust of the poet was placed in West¬ 
minster Abbey in 1 884. 

Longfellow was not hampered by pecuniary difficulties and, 
unlike many of our great men, enjoyed the advantages of a lib¬ 
eral education. He entered Bowdoin College when but fourteen, 
and was graduated from there when eighteen. When he was 
very young he showed remarkable poetic genius. He was only 
seven when he wrote his first poem. Even when a boy, Long¬ 
fellow possessed superior personal charms and gentle manners. 

His first work was to study law in his father’s office. He 
soon abandoned this and accepted the chair of Modern 
Languages in Bowdoin College. It was at this school, in his 
sophomore year, that he first attracted attention by his fluent verse. 
Soon he realized that it was necessary for him to know the man¬ 
ners, characteristics, and literature of other countries. He visited 
France, Spain, Italy, Holland, and Germany. 

Soon after his return home he entered on his work at Bow¬ 
doin College. After staying there for six years he again visited 
Europe and studied the literature of its northern countries, 
especially of Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. German 
literature exerted a great fascinating power over him and he 
reveled in its romance. Aside from devoting twenty-five years 
of his life to college work, nineteen of which were at Harvard 
University, he did a great literary work, and is the acknowledged 
leader of American poetry. Probably this is because his style is 
so simple, his expression so easy, and his language so concise. 

His broad cultivation of mind and great knowledge of the 
classics gave him a wealth of expression, concreteness being one of 
his marked characteristics. Anyone who has read his poems 
knows that his language is beautiful. What a wealth of beauty 
is there in these lines from Miles Standish: 












* 


















LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


21 


Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and 
scarlet, 

Issued the sun, the great High-Priest, in his garments resplen¬ 
dent, 

Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead. 

Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates. 

Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor beneath him 

Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet was a 
laver!” 

The effectiveness of almost every word is not only admirable, 
but wonderful. 

“ ‘Welcome, O wind of the East!’ he exclaimed in his wild exul¬ 
tation, 

‘Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of tne misty 
Atlantic! 

Blowing o’er fields of dulse, and measureless meadows of sea- 
grass, 

Blowing o’er rocky wastes, and the grottos and gardens of 
ocean! 

Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, and wrap me 

Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever within me!’” 

In expression and clearness of thought, Longfellow is truly 
unsurpassed. What a charming pen picture is the prelude to the 
Tales of a Wayside Inn. In this introduction he gives so vivid 
and so real a picture of the characters who are to tell the tales 
that we follow them one by one through the swing of their beau¬ 
tiful rhythmical rimes with an almost personal interest. 

The Ride of Paul Revere will always be cherished by the 
patriotic schoolboy. 

“For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, 

Through all our history, to the last, 

In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 

The people will waken and listen to hear 
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed 
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.” 

The Falcon of Ser Federigo and Robert of Sicily will re¬ 
main exquisite gems among American poems. Longfellow was a 
living example of irreproachable integrity, high-mindedness, and 
loving tenderness. No wonder that he touches the hearts of his 
readers and makes the little children love him. The key to his 
character is sympathy. His Children s Hour will ever be dear 


22 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


to the little schoolboy and girl who read and remember its beau¬ 
tiful lines. 


“Between the dark and the daylight, 

When the night is beginning to lower, 

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, 

That is known as the Children’s Hour.” 

* * * 

“They almost devour me with kisses, 

Their arms about me entwine, 

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine.” 

* * * 

“I have you fast in my fortress, 

And will not let you depart, 

But put you into the dungeon 
In the round-tower of my heart. 

And there will I keep you forever. 

Yes, forever and a day, 

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, 

And moulder in dust away.” 

A Psalm of Life is supposed to be the poet’s own favorite 
lines. They were, he says, written when he was rallying from a 
deep state of depression caused by the death of his wife. The 
Bridge is the expression of his own experience. 

“And I think how many thousands 
Of care-encumbered men, 

Each bearing his burden of sorrow, 

Have crossed the bridge since then.” 

While Longfellow’s imagination is not as bold as Burns’, 
Byron’s, or Coleridge’s, it is free, beautiful, and picturesque. We 
wander with him through the “flower jeweled prairies’’ and to the 
ocean shore; we listen to the mourning pines and hemlocks, and 
walk by the sky-reflecting sea, and feel that these are pictures 
awakening tender childhood memories in the vista of our own 
past lives. 












LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


23 


THOMAS GRAY. 

j HOMAS GRAY was born in Cornhill, London, De- 
| cember 26, 1717, and died at Cambridge, July 30, 
| 1771. His father was a money scrivener, a dissipated 

_| man, but skilled in music. From him, no doubt, the 

poet inherited the musical element found in his poems. His mother 
was a woman of character, and to her Gray owed all his educa¬ 
tional advantages. She, with her sister, kept an India warehouse, 
supporting herself and son. She succeeded even in sending him to 
St. Peter’s College in Cambridge, but he never finished his work 
there. 

In 1739 he and Horace Walpole toured the continent of 
Europe. Returning to Cambridge in 1741, he spent the remainder 
of his life at the University as a Bachelor of Civil Law. He 
studied with critical interest the Greek and Roman poets, philoso¬ 
phers, historians, and orators. 

Gray was a man of great erudition; a close student of the 
classics. Precision and extreme accuracy marked his work. Next 
to Milton, he is said to have been, of all English men of letters, 
the most thoroughly versed in the great classics. Few were the 
poems he wrote, but he never left one without giving it a steel 
finish. 

Gray was a handsome man, small in stature, extremely 
fastidious in dress, and always of gentle manners. Never hilarious, 
he was inclined rather to be morbid. Taine, the author of His¬ 
tory of English Literature, calls him “the morose hermit of Cam¬ 
bridge.” 

Most of Gray’s poetry is lyrical. Among his poems are 
Ode to Spring, Hymn to Adversity, The Progress of Poetry, and 
the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The Elegy is his 
greatest work. On this magnificent poem his fame must forever 
rest. It is like a string of pearls, each stanza perfect within itself 
and containing thoughts that are universal. No other poem has 
been so widely quoted. 






24 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea, 

The plowman homeward plods his weary way, 

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.” 

* * * * 

“Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, 

Await alike th’ inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” 

* * * * 

“Can storied urn, or animated bust, 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 

Can Honor’s voice provoke the silent dust, 

Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull, cold ear of Death?” 

* * * * 

“But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll; 

Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage, 

And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
The dark, unfathom’d caves of ocean bear; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” 

* * * * 

“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, 

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray; 

Along the cool, sequester’d vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.” 

* * * * 

“Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; 

Heav’n did a recompense as largely send; 

He gave to Mis’ry (all he had) a tear; 

He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a 
friend.” 


The quality and not quantity of Gray’s work entitles him to 
a rank among the greatest of England’s poets. 











LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


25 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



ILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Straford- 
on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1564, and 
died April 23, 1616. He is buried in the chancel 
of the Holy Trinity Church at Stratford. A mar¬ 
ble slab over his tomb bears this epitaph: 



Very little is known of Shakespeare’s early life or the his¬ 
tory of his ancestors. Nicholas Rowe made the first formal at¬ 
tempt at an account of Shakespeare’s life, collecting his facts prin¬ 
cipally from traditions and publishing them in 1 709. By him we 
are told that John Shakespeare, the poet’s father, was of the yeo¬ 
man class and had been a farmer in a neighboring village, 
previous to his coming to Stratford. Here he adopted the trade 
of a glover and, doubtless because of his former occupation, dealt 
also in wool and agricultural products. His rapid success in 
business shows his ability and public spirit. He was enabled to 
own two houses in Stratford and rise to the office of high bailiff, 
or mayor of the town. Mary Arden, his wife, belonged to a 
minor branch of the Warwickshire Arden family and possessed a 
considerable estate, left by her father. 

William Shakespeare was the third of eight children. Noth¬ 
ing of his early years is known. It is supposed that he attended 
the Stratford Grammar School at the age of seven. The masters 
of the schools at that period were university men of good scholar¬ 
ship. The studies pursued in the schools were mainly Latin, with 
Writing and Arithmetic, and possibly a little Greek, which was 
sometimes taught in the Grammar Schools of those days. Ben 
Jonson credits Shakespeare with “small Latin and less Greek.’’ 








26 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


It is quite probable that all the regular instruction the poet had 
was what he got at these grammar schools, for his father’s failure 
in business about the time the poet was fourteen called him 
home, doubtless to his father’s assistance. Rowe, his early 
biographer, tells us that the poet’s father “could give him no better 
education than his own employment.’’ 

The circumstances of Shakespeare’s youth were probably 
such as to cultivate his dramatic genius. To be sure, he lived in 
the country, but it was common in those days for London players 
to make frequent visits to Stratford. His father’s being high 
bailiff gave William, no doubt, an opportunity to meet these noted 
performers and from them and their plays to get “the first stir¬ 
rings of his immortal dramatic genius.’’ 

At the age of about seventeen, as tradition has it, William 
Shakespeare was a poacher on the lands of a neighboring knight. 
Sir Thomas Lucy. This magistrate accused him of deer stealing 
and roundly rated him for his dissolute ways. In revenge for this, 
the lad published a lampoon, so bitter that the enraged and offend¬ 
ed Sir Thomas drove him from Warwickshire to London. 

He was married when nineteen to Anne Hathaway, a woman 
nine years his senior. It is supposed that the poet left Stratford 
about 1586 for residence in London. Here he began his remark¬ 
able career as an actor and dramatic writer. In 1590 he was 
well started in his great work. He published his poem, Venus 
and Adonis, in 1593, dedicating it to the Earl of Southampton. 

While Shakespeare wrote poetry, it is as a great dramatist 
that we think of him and prophesy for him an undying fame. His 
dramas may be divided into three groups: comedy, history, and 
tragedy. Some of the first group are: Comedy of Errors, Mid¬ 
summer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Merry Wives of 
Windsor, and The Merchant of Venice; of the second, Henry 
VI, King John, Henry VIII, and Richard III; and of the third, 
Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King 
Lear, and Hamlet. 

The Merchant of Venice is probably the most widely 
studied of all the Shakespearian dramas. The felicity of its lan¬ 
guage and the beauty of its scenes are charming to the student. The 
trial scene, the climax of the play, showing the keenness of the 
heroine, Portia, is intensely interesting. She saves the debtor’s 
life with the following words: 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


27 


“Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. 

Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less nor more, 

But just a pound of flesh; if thou cut’st more 
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much 
As makes it light or heavy in the substance, 

Or the division of the twentieth part 

Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn 

But in the estimation of a hair, 

Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate.” 

In the comedy As You Like It are found the much quoted 
and immortally excellent lines of the melancholy Jaques: 

“All the world’s a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players: 

They have their exits, and their entrances; 

And one man in his time plays many parts, 

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, 

Mewling and pewking in the nurse’s arms. 

And then the whining school-hoy, with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, 

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, 

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 

Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, 

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, 

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, 

Full of wise saws and modern instances; 

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts 
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; 

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” 

Next to the English translation of the Bible, the greatest 
conservator of English speech is probably Shakespeare’s works. 
There is no question about the universality of the belief that he is 
the greatest writer the modern world has ever known. A popular 
educator recently said: “England could better lose most of her 
material possessions than lose her Shakespeare. 


28 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


An American orator has said: “Shakespeare was an in¬ 
tellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; 
within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; 
over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; 
upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and 
all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the in¬ 
verted sky lit with the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean— 
towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and 
continents of thought receive their dew and rain.” 

Reference Note:— Read “Tales from Shakespeare,” by Charles and 
Mary Lamb. 








m 


ifii; 


* 1 













LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


29 


ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 

LFRED, LORD TENNYSON, was born August 5, 
1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, and died 
at his home, Aldworth in Sussex, October 6, 1892. 
He was buried in Westminster Abbey; his grave is 
between those of Chaucer and Browning. He was 
the fourth son in a family of twelve children, a gifted group whom 
Leigh Hunt called “a nest of nightingales.” Tennyson’s father 
was a Lincolnshire clergyman. His mother was a sweet, gentle, 
and imaginative woman, intensely religious and extremely kind- 
hearted. 

The poet’s young life was spent in the country at his father’s 
rectory. Here it was that he received his best early training, be¬ 
ing instructed by his father. When quite young he showed poetic 
genius. It is told that, when he was a small boy, he was left alone 
in his house with a slate and a subject for a poem. When his 
brother returned he found that Alfred had covered both sides of 
the slate with verses. He scanned it and passed it back with the 
encouraging words, ‘‘Yes, Alfred, you can write.” 

His next attempt was less successful. On the death of his 
grandmother the young poet was asked to write an elegy When 
he had finished it, his grandfather gave him ten shillings and said; 
‘‘That is the first money you have earned by your poetry and, 
take my word for it, it will be the last.” This was not true, 
however, even for his boyhood; when he was nineteen he and his 
brother Charles published a volume of poems, entitled Poems by 
Two Brothers , for which they received twenty pounds. 

Two years later he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. On 
entering the college he joined a society called ‘‘The Apostles.” 
This organization was made up of the most talented young men 
of England. It was here that Alfred formed his great attach¬ 
ment for Arthur Hallam, the historian. In his second year in col¬ 
lege he won the Chancellor’s medal with his poem, Timbuctoo. 

In 1830 he published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, which es¬ 
tablished his fame. Among this collection of poems were Recol¬ 
lections of the Arabian Nights, Ode to Memory, and The Poet. 






30 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“The poet in a golden clime was born, 

With golden stars above; 

Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
The love of love.” 

In 1833, The Lady of Shalott and Other Poems was pub¬ 
lished. Among this collection we find The Palace of Art , a 
poem of rare beauty, universally admired. 

English Idylls and Other Poems was published in 1842. 
Some of the poems in this group are The Two Voices, The Epic, 
and Morte d.' Arthur, in which is found a rude, remote magnif¬ 
icence which haunts the imagination with a sensation of somber 
sublimity. Other poems are The Day Dream, The Gardener s 
Daughter, and Break , Break , Break . 

“Break, break, break, 

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! 

And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me.” 

$ * * * * 

“Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me.” 

Locksley Hall is found among the poems of this publication 
and is considered one of his most finished creations. 

“Let the great world spin forever down the ringing 
grooves of change.” 

The Princess, an immensely popular poem, was published 
in 1847; and in 1830 were added Sweet and Low and Bugle 
Song. 

“The splendor falls on castle walls 
And snowy summits old in story: 

The long light shakes across the lakes, 

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.” 

In Memoriam is a beautiful collection of elegiac verses ded¬ 
icated to the memory of Tennyson’s beloved friend, Arthur Hal- 
lam. 


“The path by which we twain did go, 

Which led by tracts that pleased us well, 
Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, 
From flower to flower, from snow to snow; 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


31 


And we with singing cheer’d the way, 

And crown’d with all the season lent, 

From April on to April went, 

And glad of heart from May to May.” 

In 1855 were published Maud and other Poems; in 1859, 
The Idylls of the King, in which are Geraint and Enid, Guinevere , 
The Passing of Arthur, and Launcelot and Elaine; in 1864 he 
published Enoch Arden, a widely read poem, deeply pathetic and 
strong in its picture of heroism in humble life. It is one of the 
most popular of Tennyson’s poems. 

In 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, the laureateship of 
England was bestowed upon Tennyson. In 1884 he was raised 
to the peerage and thus entered the House of Lords. He lived 
a long life, unmarked by such events as often distinguish the lives 
of great geniuses. He was a poet whose ideal of beauty is uni¬ 
versal harmony. 

It is interesting to note, in the progress of In Memoriam, the 
author’s growing faith. He expresses his feelings in these lines: 

“We have but faith; we cannot know; 

For knowledge is of things we see; 

And yet we trust it comes from Thee,— 

A beam in darkness; let it grow.” 

Tennyson brought poetry up to its highest standard of per¬ 
fection; he was truly the representative of his age. 

“Sunset and evening star. 

And one clear call for me! 

And may there he no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell. 

And after that the dark! 

And may there be no sadness of farewell 
When I embark; 

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 

1 hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have cross’d the bar.” 


32 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


tery in Concord. A large granite boulder, holding a 
small bronze plate with a simple inscription, marks his grave. 

Emerson was a descendent from a long line of clergy¬ 
men. His grandfather, William Emerson, built the Old Manse in 
which the author lived at Concord. Like many of his contem¬ 
poraries, Waldo was a student at Harvard University. He en¬ 
tered college at the age of fourteen and was graduated when 
eighteen. He taught school for several years near Boston, then 
attended the Divinity School at Harvard, preparing himself to be 
a Unitarian preacher. He was licensed to preach, and became 
pastor of the Old North Church of Boston. After preaching for 
six years, his religious views changed. He left his church and 
entered the lecture field, becoming the greatest lecturer of his time. 



ALPH WALDO EMERSON was born in Boston, 
May 25, 1803, and died in Concord, Massachusetts, 
April 27, 1882, and, with Hawthorne and Louisa M. 
Alcott, is buried in the beautiful Sleepy Hollow Ceme- 






LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


33 


He was a transcendentalism a great idealist, and the most 
original American philosopher of his day. He was a fearless 
speaker and believed strongly in independent thought. “Trust 
thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string,” says Emer¬ 
son. He exhorts us to be original, scoffs at customs, fashions, and 
organizations of any sort which are maintained at the expense of 
one’s individuality. 

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can 
present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s 
cultivation; but of the adopted talent you have only an extem¬ 
poraneous half possession. That which each man can do best, 
none but his Maker can teach him.” 

Emerson was an artist in the use of words. Often we find 
in his essays single words that bear the weight, beauty, and in¬ 
spiration of whole paragraphs of ordinary writing. His words 
fly swift and hard at the target, which they never fail to hit. 
While it is not possible for us ever to reach his high ideals.—for 
we are not all geniuses, with perfect wisdom sprung “Minerva- 
like from the forehead of Jove”,—yet to anyone his work will 
bring inspiration to higher ideals: his lines will always have an up¬ 
lifting power. 

Not only of the essay and lecture is he master, but he is a 
poet as well. While much of his poetry is considered mystical, it 
is beautiful, and abounds in pure gems of thought. 

“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being; 

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew; 

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
The self-same Power that brought me there, brought 
you.” 

Emerson was too much of a philosopher to be a great poet. 
He saw things in a pure and true light, but his poetry appeals 
more to the mind than to the heart. He was a giant in thought 
and followed the advice he gave to others,—“Hitch your wagon 
to a star.” 


34 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


VICTOR MARIE HUGO. 



ICTOR MARIE HUGO was born in Basancon, East 
France, February 26, 1802, and died in Paris, May 
22, 1885. His father was a military officer, and 
hence Victor’s childhood was one of frequent travels. 
He was taken to Elba, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy. 
His mother had a strong character and was educated and refined. 
She devoted her life to the welfare of her husband and her three 
sons, of whom Victor was the youngest. 

His father’s active military life made it necessary that his 
mother should control the directing of his education. At the age 
of seven he was taken to Paris, where he commenced his classical 
studies, superintended by his mother and General Lahourie, a 
brother in arms of General Hugo’s. This general took great in¬ 
terest in the three young Hugos and told them beautiful stories, 
corrected their mistakes and paid special attention to Victor’s 
study of Tacitus. He had been, however, connected with a state 
conspiracy, and was now arrested and thrown into prison; a few 
years later he was shot. This event made a very painful and 








LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


35 


lasting impression on the mind of Victor, to whom he had become 
endeared. In after years the memory of this execution weakened 
his enthusiasm for the Emperor Napoleon. 

In 1811 his father was made general and appointed major- 
domo to Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain. Victor went to Mad¬ 
rid with a view to becoming one of the pages of the King; but 
this plan was changed before he had entered the Spanish court 
and he returned to Paris, where he resumed his work in the 
classics. 

His father had planned a military life for Victor and desired 
that he should be educated to that end. Victor showed marked 
ability in mathematics, but his strong inclination was for poetry. 
His first poem was so successful that his father decided to give him 
a literary training. 

Victor Hugo was a royalist at first, probably because his 
mother was; but good sense, close study, and his broad sympathy 
for the poor and oppressed completely changed his views in later 
life and he became most thoroughly democratic. When he was 
fifteen the French Academy offered a prize in a poetic competition. 
He secretly wrote a poem of three hundred lines, entitled Pleas¬ 
ures of Study. One day as his school was taking its pupils on 
their weekly walk, he slipped out of his place in the line of schol¬ 
ars and, with more than a fifteen-year-old courage, he personally 
placed his manuscript on the desk of the Secretary of the Acad¬ 
emy. He had told his age in the poem; and his age was so 
slight and his poem so good that the old men of the Academie 
Francaise were in grave doubt and thought he was making fun of 
them. They denied him the prize, but gave him honorable men¬ 
tion. At this time even honorable mention from the great French 
Academy was heralded in the newspapers; and, of course, his 
name was brought very prominently before the public. “You 
little donkey,’’ said his elder brother, “What possessed you to put 
your age in the poem? You might have won the prize!’’ 

On another occasion, under circumstances that show us a 
touching tribute of his filial affection, he gained additional honors. 
The subject to be written upon was The Restoration of the Statue 
of Henry IV. His mother was so seriously ill, at this time, that 
her sons had to watch by her. On the eve of the last day on 
which poems could be sent to the competition, the suffering woman 
asked Victor, who was seated at her pillow, if he had thought of 
taking part in the literary tournament. He had been so preoccu¬ 
pied by his mother’s illness that he had written nothing. His 


36 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


mother was so disappointed and grieved that as soon as she fell 
asleep, he resolved to set about the work. When she awoke at 
daybreak he had the completed ode to lay before her as a morn¬ 
ing greeting. She read it with tears of joy in her eyes. 

In 1 822 he published his first volume of poems, Odes and 
Ballads, which created a decided sensation. The poems of this 
volume were of a religious and royalist character. He established 
a new style of poetry in France, breaking away from the strict 
rules followed by the early great masters of French literature, 
Corneille and Racine. 

His literary school, of which he was the acknowledged lead¬ 
er, was known as the Romanticists, and raged relentless warfare 
against the opposite group, known as the Classicists. At the age 
of twenty-five, he was the recognized master of French poetry and 
prose. He wrote poetry, dramas, and novels. His Hernani, said 
to be his best drama, is a Spanish play, containing poetry of sweet 
melody and rhythm, an embodiment of all that is lovable and beau¬ 
tiful. It was first performed in Paris on February 6, 1 830, the 
poet’s birthday. This occasion is considered one of the greatest 
dates in French literature and is known as the Battle of Hernani. 

Among the best of his novels are The Man Who Laughs, 
Toilers of the Sea, Notre Dame de Paris, Ninety-Three, and 
Les Miserahles. The last is a wonderfully interesting story, the 
most popular of all Hugo’s works. Robert Louis Stevenson said 
of it: “There are few books in the world that can be compared 
to it.’’ 

The leading character in this wonderful book is Jean Val- 
jean, an escaped convict. There are four great crises in his life: 
first, his meeting with the good bishop, which revealed to him a 
new meaning in moral kindness; second, his self-sacrifice in giving 
himself back to the convict galleys, to save the life of an innocent 
peasant; third, his test of his paternal love for his adopted daugh¬ 
ter, Cossette, by risking his own life to save that of her lover; 
and fourth, his revelation to her husband of his real dishonored 
name, through scorn of sailing under false colors. 

Victor Hugo himself sums up Jean Valjeans character 
when he says: “Maurius was beginning to catch a glimpse of 
some strange, lofty and somber figure in this Jean Valjean. An 
extraordinary virtue appeared to him, supreme and gentle and 
humble in its immensity, and the convict was transfigured into 
Christ.’’ 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


37 


Victor Hugo lived a long, eventful life. From his early 
childhood he had been involved in politics, and all of his work 
had been more or less linked with public events. His political 
views, which opposed the schemes of the self-made emperor of his 
country, caused a long banishment, during which he wrote his 
book on William Shakespeare. Remaining faithful to his own 
convictions, he had the satisfaction of seeing France once more a 
republic; and his return to Paris was almost triumphal. 

His last years were his most peaceful ones, made so by the 
universal admiration of his legion of friends. 

“You I love, O holy Nature! 

Absorbed in you I fain would be; 

But in this century of adventure, 

Servant to all we needs must be.” 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


LIVER GOLDSMITH was born in Pallas, Long¬ 
ford County, Ireland, November 10, 1728, and died 
in London, April 4, 1775. He was the son of a 
Protestant clergyman. His father was compelled to 
rent and till a farm to help support his family. Later 
the Rev. Mr. Goldsmith was better paid for his ecclesiastical 
duties, and thus he was able to change his cottage in the wilder¬ 
ness for a more commodious dwelling in a desirable locality. This 
better fortune enabled him also to educate his children. Oliver, 
the fourth child, the subject of this sketch, was first taught by a 
maid servant. 

At an early age he was sent to the village school at Lissoy, 
taught by Byrne, an old soldier and a famous story-teller, for 
whom Oliver had a great admiration. He was considered a dull 







LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


39 


pupil, but loved a jingle of words. He left “Paddy” Byrne’s 
school in his ninth year. In the grammar schools he afterward 
attended he gained some knowledge of the ancient languages. In 
these schools his life was made miserable by the ridicule of the 
students. 

He was ugly and awkward, small in stature, his features 
harsh and severely marked with smallpox. He was pointed out 
as a fright and his blundering way made him the butt of the boys 
and the master. In after years, when they saw his name attached 
to The Vicar of Wakefield and 1 he Deserted Village , they were 
glad, even proud, to remember that they had been associated with 
him in school. An amiable disposition and over-generosity were 
his attractive qualities. Poor though he was, he felt rich if he 
had a farthing in his pocket, and he spent it like a lord. 

Once, when he was returning from school, riding a horse 
which he had borrowed, and possessing a guinea which he had 
received from a friend, he began to imagine himself a gentleman: 
on entering a village at nightfall, he inquired for the best inn in 
the town and was directed by a mischief-loving lad to one of the 
most aristocratic private dwellings in the place. He rode up to 
the gate with a lordly air, demounted, ordered his horse cared for, 
and walked proudly into the best parlor. Seating himself with 
the pomp of a prince, he gave orders for his supper. The gentle¬ 
man of the house saw that there was some mistake, but decided to 
carry out the joke, giving up his house to Goldsmith. The latter, 
very much delighted and flattered, generously invited the landlord 
and his family to dine with him; and, to cap the climax, he or¬ 
dered a bottle of the gentleman’s best wine. You can imagine his 
great humiliation when, the next morning, he discovered his 
blunder. Many years later, he founded his successful drama. 
She Stoops to Conquer or The Mistakes of a Night , on this amus¬ 
ing incident. 

Oliver Goldsmith entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1 744, 
as a sizar. Five years after receiving his degree, he went home 
and studied for the ministry. In two years he presented himself 
as a candidate for ordination, but was rejected by the Bishop. 
Goldsmith had bedecked himself in scarlet breeches and cap for 
this occasion; perhaps this awakened in the Bishop a disgust 
which was the cause of his failure. 

He tried many vocations,—teaching, medicine, and law,— 
but in all of them he was a failure. What little money he made, 
he generally lost at the gambling table or gave it to some one in 


40 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


need. He tramped over Europe as far as Italy, playing tunes on his 
flute. His music everywhere set the people to dancing and often 
procured for him his supper and a night’s lodging. In these wan¬ 
derings he gathered much of the important material which he so 
successfully molded in after life into drama, novel, or poem. He 
returned to London, rented a garret, and settled down to the lowest 
drudgery of literary work, grubbing along on starvation wages. 
Suddenly a dazzling light flashed on his way and Oliver Gold¬ 
smith was known to the world as the author of The Traveler. 

“Let scliool-taught pride dissemble all it can, 

These little things are great to little man; 

And wiser he whose sympathetic mind 
Exults in all the good of all mankind. 

Ye glittering towns with wealth and splendour crowned, 

Ye fields where summer spreads confusion round, 

Ye lakes whose vessels catch the busy gale. 

Ye bending swains that dress the flowery vale, 

For me your tributary stores combine: 

Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!” 

This poem w r as soon recognized as the work of a genius. It 
is the embodiment of his wanderings through Europe. It at once 
established the author’s name among the writers of classic Eng¬ 
lish literature. 

The Deserted Village (written on Lissoy Village, the home 
of his boyhood), another celebrated poem, was soon published; 
for diction and versification it is fully equal to The Traveler. 

“Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; 

A breath can make them, as a breath has made; 

But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, 

When once destroyed, can never be supplied.” 
********* 

“Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain; 

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain; 

Teach him, that states, of native strength possest, 
Though very poor, may still be very blest; 

That trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay, 

As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away; 

While self-dependent power can time defy, 

As rocks resist the billows and the sky.” 

The Village Preacher , a division of this poem in which is 
given us a picture of Goldsmith’s father, is one of the most charm¬ 
ing descriptions in English poetry. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


41 


“His ready smile a parent’s warmth expressed, 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed; 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven; 

As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form. 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.” 

The Vicar of Wakefield, a novel, is a plain tale, charming 
in its peculiar style, abounding in improbable incidents, containing 
delicate humor, gentle pathos, and pious thought. It is without 
question the author’s most famous work. 

“The pain which conscience gives a man who has already 
done wrong is soon got over. Conscience is a coward; and those 
faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has jus¬ 
tice enough to accuse.” 

Goldsmith, with some of his friends, among whom were 
Johnson, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick, often dined at the 
St. James Coffee House. One day, when Goldsmith was absent, 
it was proposed to make him the subject of mock epitaphs, and 
Garrick wrote: 

“Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call’d Noll, 

Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.’’ 

This occasioned the writing of Retaliation, a decidedly clever 
poem, published in 1774 after the poet’s death. 

Oliver Goldsmith’s life was a turbulent one. He was al¬ 
ways blundering, always making mistakes; but his generous heart 
and genial disposition won for him a world of friends. Thackeray 
says truly, “He is the most beloved of English writers.’’ 


42 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

BRAHAM LINCOLN, the sixteenth President of the 
United States, was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, 
February 12, 1809, and died by assassination, six 
weeks after entering upon his second term as Presi¬ 
dent, at Washington, D. C., April 15, 1865. Both 
his mother and father were born in Virginia, of undistinguished 
families. His father could neither read nor write. His mother’s 
education was very limited; but she could read, and she taught 
her children from The Bible and a few other books which she had. 
Lincoln was born in the wilderness of Kentucky, whither his 
father had emigrated from Virginia, lured by the stories of Daniel 
Boone. The log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln first saw the 
light was that of the western pioneer; it contained one room, one 
rude door, no window, and a huge outside chimney. Abraham 
had one brother, Thomas, who died in infancy, and a sister, 
Sarah, who lived to be married, but died soon after. 

In 1816 his father sold his farm for three hundred dollars 
and took his pay in ten barrels of whiskey (then a regular article 
of trade) and twenty dollars. He built a flatboat on Rolling 
Creek, loaded his whiskey and household goods and, with his lit¬ 
tle family, moved beyond the Ohio River. His boat was wrecked 
and he lost much of his property, including two-thirds of his 
whiskey. He repaired his boat, gathered together what was left 
of his goods, floated down the river and landed in Spencer Coun¬ 
ty, Indiana. 

The country was wild and unsettled. Bears and other ani¬ 
mals were still found in the woods. Here it was that Lincoln 
grew up. His school life was limited to five short terms which, 
in all, did not exceed a year’s time. He was a devoted student, 
an incessant reader, with a wonderfully retentive memory. The 
Bible , Aesop's Fables , The Pilgrim's Progress , Robinson Crusoe , 
and the lives of Washington, Franklin, and Clay were read and 
re-read by him. 

When he was ten years old his mother died. Her death had 
a strong effect on his young mind, for he had great love and rev- 









































LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


43 


erence for her. He once said: “All that I am or hope to be, I 
owe to my angel mother.” 

Up to the time Lincoln was twenty-two he was a farmer. 
When he was twenty-one, the family moved to Illinois and 
settled five miles northwest of the town of Decatur, in Macon 
County. After helping his father to fence in, plow and plant ten 
acres of corn, he determined to go to work for himself. He was 
employed by some neighbors to do various kinds of work, one of 
which was splitting rails. This afterward gave him the appella¬ 
tion of “the rail splitter.” 

Lincoln was a man of more than ordinary physical strength. 
He was six feet and four inches in height and weighed over two 
hundred pounds. The story of his first attempt at public speaking, 
after landing in Illinois, is told by his cousin, John Hanks, as 
follows: “A man by the name of Posey came into our neighbor¬ 
hood and made a speech. It was a bad one, and I said Abe 
could beat it. I turned down a box and Abe made a speech. The 
other man was a candidate, Abe wasn’t. Abe beat him to death, 
his subject being The Navigation of the Sangamon River.” 

At this period a man entered into his life who exerted no 
little influence on his after-life and fortunes. This was Denton 
Offut,, a very enterprising and venturesome business man, who em¬ 
ployed John Hanks to take a boat load of stock and provisions to 
New Orleans. Hanks got Lincoln and his step-brother, John 
Johnson, to go with him. Offut having failed to get a boat, Lin¬ 
coln, Hanks, and Johnson set about and made one. After they 
had it completed, which took about a month’s time, they launched 
and loaded it with Offut’s goods, which consisted of barreled 
pork, corn, and hogs. 

The first day out they met with delay. The boat was 
stranded on Rutledge’s mill-dam, and hung hopelessly over it for 
a day and night. Here it was that Offut was strongly impressed 
with Lincoln’s clever ingenuity in relieving them from a danger¬ 
ous and embarrassing situation. This was Lincoln’s plan, upon 
whch they acted: They unloaded some of the goods into another 
boat, rolled the barrels forward, and then bored a hole in the end 
that projected over the dam. The water which had leaked in 
ran out, and the boat slid over. It was reloaded, and they pro¬ 
ceeded on their trip. Lincoln is said to be the first man in the 
history of navigation to bore a hole in the bottom of his boat to let 
the water out! 


44 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


After they reached New Orleans and the goods had been dis¬ 
posed of, Lincoln, in company with Hanks and Johnson, set out 
to see the sights of the city. One morning they came in their 
rambles over the city to a slave market. A comely mulatto girl 
was put up for sale. The sight was so revolting to Lincoln’s kind 
heart that he turned suddenly to Hanks and Johnson and said: 
“Boys, let’s get away from this. If ever i get a chance to hit that 
thing [slavery], I’ll hit it hard.’’ He had the chance and we 
have seen how hard he did “hit it’’ in his great Emancipation 
Proclamation of 1863. 

He was a self-trained, successful lawyer, a most enthusias¬ 
tic politician, and an orator who threw his whole soul into his 
speeches, which were always forceful. He was elected to the 
Legislature a number of times, and also to Congress, and lastly to 
the Presidency. 

Lincoln was a contemporary of all the great men of letters 
in America up to the close of the war; but from none of them did 
he borrow sentiment or style. He had a style distinctly his own. In 
his structure of English, he had his own strong combination of 
words which made him the most convincing speaker of his time. 
His Gettysburg speech, containing only ten sentences and but 267 
words, is known wherever the English language is spoken. It is 
a composition remarkable not only for its condensed thought, but 
for its perfect simplicity as well. 

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task 
remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take in¬ 
creased devotion to that cause for which tney gave the last full 
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, 
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth.” 

It was probably owing to Lincoln’s having lived so near the 
heart of nature in his early life, that he knew his people so well 
and so deeply loved and sympathized with them. 

It has been said of him, “It is the glory of Lincoln that, 
having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon 
the side of mercy.’’ 






























* 





















































/■ 









LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


45 


JOHN KEATS. 


OHN KEATS was born in a livery stable situated on 
“The Pavement in Moorfields,” nearly opposite the 
great Finsbury Circus, in London, England, October 
29, 1 795. He died of consumption in Rome, Italy, 
February 23, 1821. 

“He was not of gentle blood,’’ says Lowell; he belonged 
to the middle class. Whatever may have been his parentage or 
the environments of his early life, both of which seemed against 
him, it is a beautiful truth that neither could hinder the develop¬ 
ment of his determined desire to write beautiful lines. His father 
died when he was quite young and his educational advantages 
were poor. He had a great affection for his mother. It is said 
that once when she was ill, John, then a little more than four 
years old, mounted guard at her chamber door with an old sword, 
to prevent anyone from entering the room, for the doctor had or¬ 
dered her not to be disturbed. 

While in school he was the admiration of the boys, prob¬ 
ably on account of his fiery temper and disposition to fight. They 
predicted for him the future of a famous soldier. At the age of 
fifteen, on leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon named 
Hammond, of Edmonton. The place more than the position was 
congenial, for it enabled him to continue his intimacy with Mr. 
Clarke, his teacher, from whom he could borrow books. 

When he was seventeen, he read Spenser’s Faerie Queen, 
loaned to him by Mr. Clarke. The reading and inspiration of this 
great classic seemed to transform the surgeon’s apprentice into a 
great poet. 

Keats continued at his work, but it was only mechanically, 
for his heart and soul were in his great desire to be a poet. He 
was a close student of Spenser, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. 
His taste was always for the highest type of classic literature, and 
the study of these masterpieces left a marked impression on him. 

While he knew Latin and translated the Aeneid , his great 
love was for the Greeks and he reveled in their myths, nymphs, 
heroes, and gods. His Ode to a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, Ode 
to Autumn, and To a Nightingale show clearly the poet’s love for 
the beautiful. 





46 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“TLou was’t not born for death, immortal Bird! 

No hungry generations tread thee down; 

The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
In ancient days by emperor and clown: 

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 

The same that ofttimes hath 
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” 

In 1 820 the failing health of the poet became so alarming 
that he was advised by his physician and friends to try the sunny 
clime of Italy. Mr. Severn, an artist and close friend, accom¬ 
panied him. He suffered both physically and mentally. The 
thoughts of his betrothed, whom he had left behind, and the too 
great probability that he would never see her again, sank him into 
a state of the deepest gloom. He died peacefully, attended by 
his faithful friend, Severn, to whom he said in his last moments: 
“I feel the flowers growing over me.” 

And here the scroll of his short life is wound together; his 
heroic singing is forever stilled, but the beauty of his immortal 
lines will never die. 

He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, ‘‘one 
of the most beautiful spots on which the eye and heart of man can 
rest.” A little headstone bears his name and age and the epitaph, 
written by himself: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME IS WRIT IN 
WATER. 

We believe that his name will long be known, but after it is 
forgotten his verse will bear the immortality prophesied in his own 
lines: 


“A thing of Beauty is a joy forever: 

Its loveliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness, but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


47 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 


ILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cock- 
ermouth in Cumberland Highlands, England, 
April 7, 1770, and died at his home, Rydal 
Mount , Westmoreland, April 23, 1830. He is 
buried by the side of his daughter in the church¬ 
yard of Grasmere. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey are known as the “Lake Poets” because they lived in 
the same lake district of England. 

Wordsworth’s father was law agent to Sir James Lowther, 
afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. The death of his father and 
mother made him an orphan in his thirteenth year. He first at¬ 
tended school at Hawkshead School in rural England, then went 
to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor’s 
degree in 1791. In the latter part of that year he went to 
Paris, almost immediately becoming interested in the great French 
Revolution. He thought seriously of uniting himself with the 
leaders of the Girondist Party, but was persuaded by friends to 









48 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


remain at home. His enthusiastic admiration for the revolutionists 
is expressed in these lines: 

“Bliss was it at that dawn to be alive, 

But to be young was very heaven.” 

Had he been left to follow his own impulses, he would 
doubtless have been sent with so many others of the Girondists to 
the guillotine. He was, however, saved by friends at home who 
stopped his allowance, compelling him to return to England at the 
close of 1 792. 

In 1 793 he published Descriptive Sketches and The Even¬ 
ing Walk . The Sketches were composed on his tour in Switzer¬ 
land and the walk was among tne mountains of Westmoreland. 
This last poem was addressed to his sister, Dorothy, for whom 
the poet had a most devoted affection. She was intellectual and 
of keen perception, and deeply sympathized with her brother in 
his aspirations and views. 

When Wordsworth and his sister were living at Racedown 
Lodge in Somersetshire, in 1 797, they were visited by the poet 
Coleridge. This meeting was a mutually pleasant one and it be¬ 
gan a lifelong friendship between the poets. 

Wordsworth, in company with his sister and Coleridge, vis¬ 
ited Germany; it was on the event of this visit that he wrote his 
“Lucy poems,’’ so widely admired. The lines of these poems con¬ 
tain a sweet and beautiful pathos. 

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways 
Beside the springs of Dove ,— 1 

A maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love. 

A violet by a mossy stone 
Half-hidden from the eye; 

Fair as a star, when only one 
Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 
When Lucy ceased to be; 

But she is in her grave, and O, 

The difference to me!” 

In 1 797 Wordsworth published his Lyrical Ballads. In 
this volume also appeared Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. The 
best known poem of the Lyrical Ballads is We Are Seven. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


49 


“I met a little cottage girl: 

She was eight years old, she said; 

Her hair was thick with many a curl 
That clustered round her head.” 
****** 

“ ‘Sisters and brothers, little maid, 

How many may you be?’ 

‘How many? Seven in all,’ she said, 

And wondering looked at me.” 

* * * * * * 

“ ‘How many are you, then,’ said I, 

‘If they two are in heaven?’ 

Quick was the little maid’s reply! 

‘O Master! we are seven.’” 

Tintern Abbey, probably more than any other of Words¬ 
worth’s poems, reveals the message the poet had to give the world. 

“O, yet a little while 
May I behold in thee what I was once. 

My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make, 

Knowing that Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege, 

Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy; for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 

Shall e’er prevail against us or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings.” 

Wordsworth was a poet who grew. He began by writing 
simple lyrics, then in an intermediate style he mixed simplicity 
and grandeur, and finally wrote poems of greatness. His 
Laodamia , Evening Ode , and Ode to Immortality belong to his 
last work. 

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home.” 


4 


50 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


In this poem Wordsworth reaches his highest point of 
grandeur. In these lines we see the Platonic doctrine of the pre¬ 
existence of the soul. 

Wordsworth may well be called England’s greatest nature 
poet. He loved everything in nature, and all things akin to na¬ 
ture. The rainbow to him was an inspiration. 

“My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky; , 

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 

Or let me die! 

The Child is father of the Man; 

And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety.” 

The cuckoo and the nightingale charmed him with their songs. 
The mountains and the sea were his companions and he embodied 
them all in his inspired lines. Many a sorrowing soul has been 
uplifted by the sentiment of his soaring spirit. He was purely 
good and lived as he wrote. 

Never since the time of Homer did a poet dedicate himself 
to poetry with so pure, perfect, and uninterrupted a devotion as did 
Wordsworth. 


“What we have loved. 

Others will love and we will teach them how; 
Instruct them how the mind of man becomes 
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth 
On which he dwells, above this frame of things 
(Which ’mid all revolution in the hopes 
And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) 

In beauty exalted, as it is itself , 

Of quality and fabric more divine.” 

Wordsworth lived an uneventful, long, and beautiful life in 
the serene lake country he loved so well. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


51 



ROBERT BURNS. 

OBERT BURNS was born in a clay cottage near Ayr, 
Scotland, January 25, 1759, and on July 21, 1796, 
he “passed beyond the twilight of purple hues.’* He 
was the son of a poor peasant and his early life was 
one of extreme poverty. But Robert Burns was a 
born poet, and, when a child, driving the cart or walking to work, 
he might have been heard to murmur: 

“That I for poor auld Scotland’s sake 
Some useful plan or book could make 
Or sing a song at least.” 

His father was too poor to give him any educational advan¬ 
tages; but, despite poverty and an untrained mind, he was a gem 
destined to shine with unequaled brilliancy. With the most pene¬ 
trative and keenest of insights, he saw to the core all that was 
good, bad, or humorous, and expressed it in his own peasant 







52 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


language. He struggled to stamp out marked distinctions in 
social classes. He says, “I am a man and all things human are 
kin to me.” 

“Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hangs his head, and a’ that? 

The coward slave, we pass him by, 

We dare be poor for a’ that! 

For a’ that, and a’ that, t 

Our toils obscure, and a’ that; 

The rank is but the guinea stamp,— 

The man’s the gowd for a’ that! 

What though on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hodden grey, and a’ that? 

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,— 

A man’s a man for a’ that! 

For a’ that, and a’ that, 

Their tinsel show, and a’ that; 

The honest man, though e’er sae poor, 

Is king o’ men for a’ that!” 

In The T l va Dogs, a remarkable poem. Burns has embodied 
the peasant and gentry, and has not failed to impersonate, in the 
two dogs, the tyranny of the nobility and the torture of the poor. 
The legend of Tam O’Shanter, which is very popular, is an effec¬ 
tive account of the results of too much ale-house conviviality. 

One author has told how Burns compares himself to an 
Aeolian harp strung to every wind of heaven. His genius gushes 
forth and envelops things living and lifeless with a tender sympa¬ 
thy that can see nothing mean or worthless. The mouse, the 
louse, and the lady—all are interesting to him. 

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursel’s as ithers see us! 

It wad frae mony a blunder free us. 

And foolish notion: 

What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us 
And ev’n devotion!” 

Burns’ Cotter s Saturday Night , like Whittier’s Snon> 
Bound, is probably a picture of his own peasant life. 

“From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs, 

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad; 

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 

‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God!’ 

And certes, in fair Virtue’s heavenly road, 

The cottage leaves the palace far behind.” 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


53 


One incident will show his tender heart and a warm sym¬ 
pathy. On his return from Edinburg, where he had been but 
poorly paid for his work, he found his brothers and sister trying 
to support his aged mother. He gave them one hundred and 
eighty pounds. He later said of this, “I give myself no airs on 
this, for it was mere selfishness on my part. I was conscious that 
the wrong scale of the balance was pretty heavily charged, and I 
thought that throwing a little filial and fraternal affection into the 
scale in my favor, might help to smooth matters at the grand reck¬ 
oning.” 

His beautiful lines addressed to his lost love, the Highland 
Mary and To Mary in Heaven , will ever be cherished by readers 
who love the purest emotions that enter the human heart. 

“Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 
The castle o’ Montgomery, 

Green be your woods, and fair your flowers. 

Your waters never drumlie! 

There simmer first unfaulds her robes, 

And there the langest tarry; 

For there I took the last fareweel 
O’ my sweet Highland Mary. 

Wi’ mony a vow, and lock’d embrace, 

Our parting was fu’ tender; 

And, pledging aft to meet again, 

We tore oursel’s asunder; 

But, oh! fell Death’s untimely frost 
That nipt my flower sae airly! — 

Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay, 

That wraps my Highland Mary!” 

Burns, like Byron and Poe, had faults; but we often find 
in fine poetic expressions sincere regret for his weaknesses. 

“When ranting round in Pleasure’s ring, 

Religion may be blinded; 

Or if she gie a random sting, 

It may be little minded; 

But when on life we’re tempest-driven,— 

A conscience but a canker,— 

A correspondence fix’d wi’ Heaven 
Is sure a noble anchor!” 

His great sympathethic soul seemed to encompass all things 
high and low. 




54 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


He speaks thus, over his plough, to the uprooted daisy: 

“Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 

Thou’s met me in an evil hour, 

For I maun crush amang the stoure 
Thy slender stem; 

To spare thee now is past my power, 

Thou bonny gem.” 

And thus to the field-mouse he has frightened from his 
furrow: 

“Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie, 

Oh, what a panic’s in thy breastie! 

Thou needna start awa’ sae hasty, 

Wi’ bickering brattle! 

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, 

Wi’ murd’ring pattle!” 

* * * * 

“But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, 

In proving foresight may be vain: 

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men 
Gang aft a-gley, 

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain 
For promised joy. 

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me! 

The present only toucheth thee: 

But, och! I backward cast my e’e 
On prospects drear; 

An’ forward, though I canna see, 

I guess an’ fear.” 

Love with Burns was the beginning and end of his exis¬ 
tence; he loved to love. Due not to art but to nature is the gift 
we find in Burns. Scotland may well boast of her “Bobby” 
Burns, a loyal subject, and one of the sweetest singers the world 
has ever known. 

“When Death’s dark stream I ferry o’er,— 

A time that surely shall come,— 

In heaven itself I’ll ask no more 
Than just a Highland welcome.” 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


55 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


mony, and a writer of some note. His mother was a 
lady of superior ability and classic education. She possessed a 
good talent for narration. The poet Scott could boast of descend¬ 
ing from an excellent ancestry of ancient Scots, whose deeds he 
was destined to immortalize in poetry and prose. 

At the age of eighteen months he contracted a fever which 
left him a cripple for life. On account of his delicate health he 
was sent to live at his grandfather’s house, near Kelso, where he 
was surrounded by ruins and scenes famous in history and rich 
with old legends. Out of these early impressions he got much of 
the material for his work. He was considered a dull pupil in 
some branches of his school work, and when he was at the age 
of seven one of his schoolmasters, provoked by his stupidity, said 


IR WALTER SCOTT was born in Edinburg, Scotland, 
August 15, 1771, and died at Abbotsford , September 
21, 1 832. He was buried in Dryburgh Abbey. His 
father, a lawyer, was a dignified man, fond of cere- 







56 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


it would be necessary to bore holes in his head, insert the words, 
and then plug up the holes so the words might not escape. Even 
though at this time Scott seemed dull in some things, he was early 
noted for a peculiar brilliancy of mind. 

In high school he distinguished himself by story-telling. 
Many of the stories he told were of his own invention. He had 
a fascinating manner and never failed to have an audience. He 
passed through the high school and the University of Edinburg. 
He became well versed in Latin, but disliked Greek. He was a 
great reader and was particularly fond of romances. He studied 
border life in all its phases and told of it in his ballads and lyrics 
While he had chosen law for his profession and was admitted to 
the bar, his real interest was for literature. 

His first great literary success was The Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border. In these poems of border minstrelsy we get 
glimpses of Scott’s many great powers. We see here his wide 
range of historical study and his delight in recalling old manners 
and customs; but the secret charm of his lines is in his power 
to touch the hearts of his readers. 

Scott is a devoted antiquarian and throws an air of witchery 
over his pictures. 

The Lay of the Last Minstrel is a long narrative poem, 
composed of six cantos. It was published in 1 805 and charmed 
all Europe. This musical lyric is made up of many romances, 
whose scenes are painted in gorgeous hues of the Highlands. 
Knights in armor, lords and ladies play their parts as they did 
in the legends of the Border War. 

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land! 

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, 

As home his footsteps he hath turned 
From wandering on a foreign strand? 

If such there breathe, go, mark him well; 

For him no Minstrel raptures swell; 

High though his titles, proud his name, 

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, 

Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 

The wretch, concentred all in self, 

Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 

And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


57 


Marmion , his greatest poem, penned when the poet was in 
the most prosperous and happiest period of his life, is a tale of 
chivalry. In no other of Scott’s poems has he reached the height 
of word painting seen in these lines. The beginning of the intro¬ 
duction to the first canto is a description of his home surroundings. 
In these beautiful lines we note the excellence of the poet’s power 
to make others see what he sees. 

Canto Five of this selection contains Lady Herron’s song, 
Lochinvar, which to the schoolboy and girl is probably the most 
familiar of any part of the poem. 

“O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, 

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; 

And, save his good broadsword, he weapon had none, 

He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. 

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, 

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.” 

Scott reaches his highest poetic power in the picture of the 
battle of Flodden Field. It is painted in dashing, romantic, and 
intensely patriotic colors. 

“With that, straight up the hill there rode 
Two horsemen drenched with gore, 

And in their arms, a helpless load, 

A wounded knight they bore. 

His hand still strain’d the broken brand; 

His arms were smeared with blood and sand. 
Dragged from among the horses’ feet, 

With dinted shield, and helmet beat, 

The falcon-crest and plumage gone, 

Can that be haughty Marmion!” 
******* 

“The war, that for a space did fail, 

Now trebly thundering swelled the gale, 

And— Stanley! was the cry: — 

A light on Marmion’s visage spread, 

And fired his glazing eye: 

With dying hand, above his head 
He shook the fragment of his blade, 

And shouted ‘Victory!-- 
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!’ 

Were the last words of Marmion.” 

The Lady of the Lake , the most widely read of any of 
Scott’s long poems, is a poetic novelette. It opens with the chase, 
presented in his most poetic style. 


58 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“The stag at eve had drunk his fill, 

Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill, 
And deep his midnight lair had made 
In long Glenartney’s hazel shade; 

But, when the sun his beacon red 
Had kindled on Benvoirlich’s head, 

The deep-mouth’d bloodhound’s heavy bay 
Resounded up the rocky way. 

And faint, from farther distance borne, 
Were heard the clanging hoof and horn.” 


The management of fights is one of Scott’s special gifts, and 
the personal combat between Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James in 
this poem is his best example. 

“Three times in closing strife they stood, 

And thrice the Saxon’s blade drank blood; 

No stinted draught, no scanty tide, 

The gushing flood the tartans dyed. 

Fierce Roderick felt the fatal drain, 

And showered his blows like wintry rain; 

And, as firm rock or castle-roof 
Against the winter shower is proof, 

The foe, invulnerable still, 

Foiled his wild rage by steady skill; 

Till, at advantage ta’en, his brand 
Forced Roderick’s weapon from his hand, 

And, backward borne upon the lea, 

Brought the proud Chieftain to his knee.” 
********* 

“Like adder darting from his coil, 

Like wolf that dashes through the toil, 

Like mountain-cat who guards her young, 

Full at Fitz-James’s throat he sprung; 

Received, but recked not of a wound, 

And locked his arms his foeman round.” 
********* 

“They tug, they strain! down, down they go, 

The Gael above, Fitz-James below. 

The Chieftain’s grip his throat compressed, 

His knee was planted on his breast; 

His clotted locks he backward threw, 

Across his brow his hand he drew, 

From blood and mist to clear his sight, 

Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright! 

But hate and fury ill supplied 
The stream of life’s exhausted tide, 

And all too late the advantage came, 

To turn the odds of deadly game; 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


59 


For, while the dagger gleamed on high, 

Reeled soul and sense, reeled brain and eye. 

Down came the blow! but in the heath 
The erring blade found bloodless sheath. 

The struggling foe may now unclasp 
The fainting Chiefs relaxing grasp; 

Unwounded from the dreadful close, 

But breathless all, Fitz-James arose.” 

In this combat, it is extremely gratifying to the reader to 
find the coarser forms of energy made to succumb to the more 
elevated and refined. 

When Lord Byron brought out his Childe Harold, Scott 
was no longer the greatest poet of England and he wisely turned 
his mind to prose. The Waverley Novels are the result, and they 
were read by all English people, from the lowest to the highest. 

Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Old Mortality, Quentin Durward, The 
Antiquary, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy , and Heart of Midlothian 
are among the best of the author’s historic and personal novels. 
Scott’s reputation as a writer rests mainly on these novels, which 
are the most widely read books in the English language. In their 
day they were considered the most marvelous things in literature. 
They are characterized by great breadth of thought and 
style; and the author deals with public, rather than private life. 

In an early part of the poet’s successful literary career, he 
had purchased a mountain farm extending along the Tweed, and 
he erected upon it a magnificent mansion, “a Gothic romance em¬ 
bodied in stone and mortar.” Here he lived grandly, and nobly en¬ 
tertained princes, peers, and poets. The money panic of 1 825 came, 
his business house failed, and his splendid fortune and Abbotsford, 
his estate, were lost to him. He was now fifty-five, penniless and 
burdened with an enormous debt. He resolved that none of his 
creditors should lose by his failure. It seems almost a miracle that, 
by his untiring application and devotion to his literary work, he 
not only settled with his creditors but restored his possession of 
Abbotsford. 

The marvelous sum of money received for his books shows 
their wonderful popularity. The author of the W aver ley Novels 
was rightly named ‘‘Wizard of the North.” 

His words to Lockhart, ‘‘Be a good man, my dear,” are the 
moral of his writing and his life. 

“Sir Walter Scott was like the head-land stemming a rough 
sea: he was gradually worn away but never crushed.” 


60 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. 

EORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, was born in 
London, England, January 22, 1 788, and died while 
fighting in the service of the Greeks at Missolonghi in 
Greece, April 19, 1824. The Greeks were granted 
the valued possession of the heart of their leader, and 
the rest of his body was sent to England. Refused burial in 
Westminster Abbey, Byron was interred in the family vault at 
Hucknall, near Newstead. 

Byron came from an ancient and illustrious Roman family, 
who accompanied William the Conqueror to England. A grand¬ 
uncle, whom the poet succeeded in the English nobility, had been 
tried before the House of Lords on the charge of killing a neigh¬ 
bor, and although acquitted, he conducted himself so badly as 
to be called “wicked Lord Byron.” The poet’s grandfather 
was Admiral Byron, known as “Foul-weather Jack.” His father 
was Captain John Byron of the Guards, a profligate officer, who 
eloped to France with the wife of an English nobleman, after¬ 
ward married Catherine Gordon, the mother of the poet, and 
then, having squandered her fortune, abandoned her when her 
little son was but two years old. Forsaken by his father at this 
early stage of life, the boy was left to the uncertain training of 
his mother, who was in the main a good woman but possessed of 
a very uneven temper. In her fits of anger, he was her “lame 
brat;” while in her pleasant moods, he was “her darling boy” 
and the recipient of her kisses. He became self-willed and dis¬ 
played a sullen and stubborn resistance to being controlled. This 
characteristic followed him through life. 

After her husband’s departure, Mrs. Byron went back to 
her former home at Aberdeen, Scotland. Here, in Scottish 
schools, young Byron received his early education. A change 
took place in the life of the poet in his eleventh year when his 
grand-uncle, the “wicked Lord Byron,” died, leaving George 
the only heir to his title. His mother returned to Newstead Abbey, 
England. She sent him to Harrow to school for four years, after 
which he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he became 
noted for his recklessness and pride. He studied just what he 
liked and slighted what was not agreeable to him. He had a con- 























LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


61 


tempt for academic honors and ignored all rules. He even kept 
a young bear in his room and told the boys it was in training for 
a fellowship! At the age of nineteen he left the college without 
a degree, disgusted with his college and with himself. 

Byron published his first volume of poems, entitled Hours 
of Idleness , while in Cambridge. Among these poems we find the 
stanza, Damaetas , in which he describes himself. 

“In law an infant, and in years a boy. 

In mind a slave to every vicious joy; 

From every sense of shame and virtue wean’d, 

In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend; 

Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child; 

Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild; 

Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool; 

Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school; 
Damaetas ran through all the maze of sin, 

And found the goal where others just begin: 

Even still conflicting passions shake his soul, 

And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure’s bowl; 

But, pall’d with vice, he breaks his former chain, 

And what was once his bliss appears his bane.”- 

This volume received comment from the critics and reviewers 
so severe that it stirred his quick temper to the writing of a scathing 
satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. This was his first 
literary battle and in it he was most successful. In 1 809, while 
still basking in the sunshine of this victory, the young Lord started 
for a tour of the continent. He wandered two years over Spain, 
Albania, Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor. 

He returned to Newstead and lived for a short time, writing 
his Childe Harold. He then went to London to enter politics. 
He took his seat in the House of Lords and several times had an 
active part in important measures. In 1812 he published two 
cantos of Childe Harold, which gave him instantaneous popularity. 
He says of himself: “I woke up one morning and found myself 
famous.” Young Byron became the lion of the hour, not only in 
London but in all Europe. 

During his residence in London he wrote a great deal. 
Some of the long poems he has produced are Giaour, The Bride 
of Abydos, Corsair, The Siege of Corinth, Mazeppa, Don Juan, 
and The Prisoner of Chillon. In 1815 he married Lady Noel 
Milbank, who left him in less than a year. To them was born 
one daughter, Ada, to whom the poet addressed the beautiful lines 
that open the third canto of Childe Harold. 


62 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


After his separation from his wife he lost his popularity. 
In 1816 he left England, never to return. Wandering lonely and 
disconsolate through Italy, he lived a reckless life. When, in 
1821, trouble arose between Greece and Turkey, he joined the 
Greeks and devoted the rest of his life to their cause. In his 
Siege of Corinth we find these heroic lines addressed to Leonidas 
and his men, who fell in the Battle of Thermopylae. 

“They fell devoted, but undying; 

The very gale their names seem’d sighing: 

The waters murmur’d of their name; 

The woods were peopled with their fame; 

The silent pillar, lone and gray, 

Claim’d kindred with their sacred clay; 

Their spirits wrapp’d the dusky mountain, 

Their memory sparkled o’er the fountain; 

The meanest rill, the mightiest river 
Roll’d mingling with their fame for ever, 

Despite of every yoke she bears, 

That land is glory’s still and theirs! 

’Tis still a watch-word to the earth: 

When man would do a deed of worth 
He points to Greece, and turns to tread, 

So sanction’d, on the tyrant’s head: 

He looks to her, and rushes on 
Where life is lost, or freedom won.” 

In many respects Byron’s life was like that of Burns, tur¬ 
bulent and fraught with bitter disappointments. He possessed re¬ 
markable literary genius. Macaulay says he exercised a great 
influence over the literature of France and that he was the apostle 
of freedom in Southern Europe. Robert Pollock, a great ad¬ 
mirer of Byron, says in his Course of Time: 

“He, from above descending, stoop’d to touch 
The loftiest thought; and proudly stoop’d, as though 
It scarce deserved his verse.” 

Byron was a liberty lover and gave his genius and his life 
for it. He was truly a remarkable writer of his day and his 
dramas and poems will always be a source of wonder and pleas¬ 
ure to those who contemplate the workings of the passions of the 
human heart both in solitude and society. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


63 


“Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 

For there thy habitation is the heart— 

The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 

And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d—• 

To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom, 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 
And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar—for ’twas trod, 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 

By Bonnivard!—May none those marks efface! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God.’’ 


64 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


ATHANIEL HAWTHORNE was born in Salem, 
Massachusetts, July 4, 1804, and died in Plymouth, 
May 19, 1864. He was of Puritan ancestry. His 
father and grandfather were sea-captains. His mother 
was an educated English lady of much refinement. 
So, from his father Hawthorne inherited bold determination and 
fixedness of purpose, and from his mother artistic beauty and rare 
refinement. 

He was a student at Bowdoin College when Longfellow and 
Franklin Pierce were there. He was graduated from that col¬ 
lege in 1825, having completed the course in three years. While 
there he formed a life-long friendship with Longfellow and Pierce, 
both of whom favored him in after life: Longfellow, by pointing 
out the charm and beauty of his style of writing, and Pierce (who 
became President of the United States), by appointing him to 
public office. 






LITTLE LIFE STORIES 65 

At an early age Hawthorne had a vision that his life work 
would be that of an author, and in a letter to his mother he said: 
“I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases, nor a 
minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quar¬ 
rels. So I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an 
author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full 
of books written by your son, with ‘Hawthorne’s Works’ printed 
on the backs?” 

When quite young, Hawthorne edited a manuscript paper, 
The Spectator, wherein his unusual talents and lively style were 
clearly seen. Hawthorne was a great student, well versed in the 
classics. The study of Latin was especially congenial to him, and 
he was delighted in the translating of the Roman po^cs. He 
was eccentric in his early literary life, living like a hermit for 
months and isolating himself entirely from the society of all but his 
own family. He was in the habit of taking long solitary walks. He 
said: ‘‘Living in solitude till the fullness of time was come, I still 
kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart.” 

Hawthorne’s name is connected with those of Emerson, 
Thoreau, Parker, Alcott, and Margaret Fuller in the memorable 
experiment of Brook Farm. His life work was a varied one. He 
held a number of governmental positions given him by Presidents 
Pierce and Polk. Mr. George Bancroft, the historian, appointed 
him weigher in the Custom House of Boston. It was following 
his dismissal from this position, occasioned by a change in the 
political administraton, that he wrote his master work. The Scarlet 
Letter. This powerful romance forever fixed his rank among 
American prose writers. His introductory chapter to The Scarlet 
Letter, ‘‘The Custom House,” is a most delightful sketch and shows 
clearly his acute and subtle intellect. 

Hawthorne was not a voluminous writer, but his work is 
that of an idealist whose art is of a high quality. He had a 
curious power of analysis, and his diction has an exquisite purity. 
Twice Told Tales, Mosses From an Old Manse, The House of 
Seven Cables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The 
Great Stone Face, The Scarlet Letter, and Grandfather s Chair 
are his principal works. 

The old-fashioned school in Grandfather s Chair is thus de¬ 
scribed : 

“Now, imagine yourselves, my children, in Master Ezekiel 
Cheever’s school-room. It is a large, dingy room, with a sanded 
floor, and is lighted by windows that turn on hinges and have 


5 


66 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


little diamond-shaped panes of glass. The scholars sit on long 
benches, with desks before them. At one end of the room is 
a great fire-place, so very spacious that there is room enough 
for three or four boys to stand in each of the chimney corners. 
This was the good old fashion of fire-places when there was 
wood enough in the forests to keep people warm without digging 
into the bowels of the earth for coal.” 

Hawthorne died at Wayside and is buried in Sleepy Hollow, 
a beautiful cemetery in Concord, where he had often walked 
’neath the pines while living at the Old Manse which had been 
the former home of Emerson. He sleeps near the graves of Emer¬ 
son and the Alcotts. The one word, HAWTHORNE, inscribed on 
a simple stone, marks his grave. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


67 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


OHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, the Quaker poet, 
was born December 17, 1807, at Haverhill, Massa¬ 
chusetts, on the banks of the Merrimac river. He died 
September 7, 1892, at Hampton Falls, New Hamp¬ 
shire, and was buried at Amesbery, Massachusetts. 

Whittier had not a classical education, either in books or 
travel, and his life was not eventful; his health was generally 
poor. He was a leader in agitating the slave question and was 
an ardent worker for the emancipation of the negro. 

Whittier was a man of clear and forcible insight, but without 
polish. His simplicity, manly sentiment, and nobleness will always 
be appreciated. With the exception of Bryant, he was the most 
purely American of all poets. There is a golden thread of sym¬ 
pathy with honest labor pervading his entire poetical work, for it 
was from The Bible, the Book of all Books, that he learned his 
greatest of lessons, “The nearness of God to man.” 





LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


No American writer, unless it be Irving, has so beautifully 
portrayed pictures of his beloved country. His broad sympathy 
for the persecuted led him to write many of his slave poems, for he 
had the most stirring indignation and bitter antipathy for African 
slavery. Such poems as Shipper Iresoris Ride, Mabel Martin, 
and Mary Garvin exercised a great influence on the minds of the 
people. 

The average reader of poetry has great respect for Whittier’s 
poems because they are easily understood. Where is the man or 
woman who does not enter into the aspiration or discontent of 
Maud Muller when “She looked and sighed, ‘Ah me, that I the 
judge’s bride might be’ ”? nor who feels not the glowing patriotism 
of Barbara Fritchie when she said, “Shoot, if you must, this old 
gray head, but spare your country’s flag’’? 

The reputation of such poems is permanent and beyond 
criticism. The touch of nature in the poem, In School Days, is 
not excelled by any art. 

" Tm sorry that I spelt the word: 

I’d hate to go above you, 

Because,’—the brown eyes lower fell,— 

‘Because, you see, I love you!”’ 

* * * * * 

“He lives to learn, in life’s hard school, 

How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss, 

Like her,—because they love him.” 

Whittier took hold of his life work with keen realization and 
firmness. “While in life’s late afternoon,’’ he said: 

“And so beside the silent sea, 

I wait with muffled oar: 

No harm from him can come to me 
On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where his islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air, 

I only know, I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care.” 

If I were asked to give an intelligent person an idea of Whit¬ 
tier’s genius, I should say, “Read Snow-Bound .” This exquisite 
poem has no rival in English literature, unless it be Burns’ Cotter s 
Saturday Night. This beautiful picture of New England days 
is so wonderfully wrought that it never fails to charm the reader. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


69 


Everything is naturally introduced, and the reflections are both 
tende; and manly. Who has not been inspired by these beautiful 
lines: 

“Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 

(Since He who knows our need is just), 

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees! 

Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 

That life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own!” 


70 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


EDGAR ALLAN POE. 


DGAR ALLAN POE was born in Boston, Massachu¬ 
setts, January 19, 1809, and died in Baltimore, Mary¬ 
land, October 7, 1859. He was left an orphan when 
quite young and was adopted by John Allan, a 
wealthy man of Richmond, Virginia. He was a beau¬ 
tiful, attractive, and bright lad and Mr. Allan indulged him in 
everything that wealth could afford. , , 

At the age of seven he was sent to school at Stoke-Newing¬ 
ton, near London, where he spent six years. Returning to 
America, he studied under private tutors for three years, then en¬ 
tered the University of Virginia. Here, however, he remained 
only a year; like many other geniuses, he never completed a college 
course. 

There is probably no other American writer who has suf¬ 
fered as greatly from unjust criticism as has Edgar Allan Poe. 
One reason is, possibly, that he was so unlike his contemporary 
poetic brothers, who were probably without exception strictly 
moral characters. While Poe was not a bad man, he was self- 
indulgent, having been reared too luxuriously. Many of the 
disappointments of his later life may be justly attributed to his 
early over-indulgence. 

Mr. Ingram, who has written an extensive memoir of Poe 
and who enjoyed a very close friendship with the poet, 
being associated with him in the editorial conduct of his paper, 
said of him: “He was a worshipper of intellect—longing to 
grasp the power of mind that moves the stars—to bathe his soul 
in the dreams of seraphs.’’ 

The poetic genius seems to have been inborn in Poe, for 
when but eleven years of age, he wrote these lines: 

To Helen. 

“Helen, thy beauty is to me 

Like those Nicean barks of yore, 

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, 

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 








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LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


71 


On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, ’ 
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece, 

And the grandeur that was Rome. 


Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand, 
The agate lamp within thy hand! 

Ah! Psyche, from the regions which 
Are Holy-Land!” 


The Raven , the most commonly criticised poem and the one 
most generally commented upon of all his work, is an excellent ex¬ 
ample of his originality. 


“Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, 

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow,—sorrow for the lost 
Lenore,— 

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
Lenore,— 

Nameless here for evermore.” 

“ ‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! 
By that Heaven that bends above us,—by that God we both 
adore, 

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore, 
Clasp a fair and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!’ 
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’ ” 

if******* 

“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, 
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on 
the floor; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted— nevermore !” 

Poe was a man of wonderful imagination; poetry with him 
was a passion. There is a marvelous beauty in many of his lines; 
in the few poems he has written there is a charm greater than can 


72 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


be found in the works of any other poet of his time. His Anna¬ 
bel Lee is a beautiful expression of his love passion. 

“It was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden lived, whom you may know 
By the name of Annabel Lee; 

And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
Than to love, and be loved by me. 


I was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea; 

But we loved with a love that was more than love, 
I and my Annabel Lee,— 

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 
Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that long ago. 

In this kingdom by the sea, 

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 
My beautiful Annabel Lee; 

So that her high-born kinsmen came, 

And bore her away from me, 

To shut her up in a sepulchre, 

In this kingdom by the sea.” 

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
Of those who were older than we, 

Of many far wiser than we; 

And neither the angels in heaven above, 

Nor the demons down under the sea. 

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” 


MS. Found in a Bottle was written in 1833 and won for 
the writer a prize, of one hundred dollars. Some of his other 
prose stories are The Cold Bug , The Black Cat , The Pit and 
the Pendulum, Ligea, and The Fall of the House of Usher. 

Poe was a scholar of rare type. He was naturally morbid 
and his weird, imaginative prose stories have a peculiar fascination 
for the reader. Like many other great men, Poe had personal 
faults; his life was short and his work was not extensive, but it is 
great in quality. 

While death claimed him in his early manhood and his 
great imaginative fancies are sleeping, the weird strains of The 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


73 


Raven will be remembered evermore and “the tinkle of the bells’* 
will never cease to sound, 

“Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells— 

Of the bells, bells, bells— 

To the sobbing of the bells; 

Keeping time, time, time 
As he knells, knells, knells, 

In a happy Runic rhyme. 

To the rolling of the bells— 

Of the bells, bells, bells—< 

To the tolling of the bells— 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells— 

Bells, bells, bells— 

To the moaning ani the groaning of the bells.” 


74 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

LIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born in Cam¬ 
bridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809, and died 
October 7, 1 894, and with Lowell and Longfellow is 
buried in Mt. Auburn. In the year that Holmes was 
born were born also Tennyson, Poe, Darwin, Glad¬ 
stone, and Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Holmes was educated to be 
a physician and practiced his profession with marked success. He 
was Professor of Anatomy in Dartmouth College and also in 
Harvard Medical School; but it is as a man of letters that we 
know him best. 

He was a born aristocrat of the true type. He inherited his 
poetic genius from both his mother and his father. Geniality and 
humor are his marked characteristics. His writings abound in 
apothegms. He never failed to see the humorous side, and seems 
to have thought “There is time to laugh.” 

Dr. Holmes was a typical university poet, and indeed a 
thoroughbred college man. His commemoration odes and num¬ 
erous poems addressed to alumni meetings at Harvard suggest his 
great loyalty to his Alma Mater. He has written many short 
poems of excellent style. The Boys, a poem addressed to the 
Harvard class of 1 829 at a meeting thirty years after graduation, 
is a good example of the gayety and humor of his youthful tem¬ 
perament. 

“Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 

If there has, take him out, without making a noise. 

Hang the Almanac’s cheat and the Catalogue’s spite! 

Old time is a liar! we’re twenty to-night! 

We’re twenty! We’re twenty! Who says we are more? 

He’s tipsy,—young jackanapes!—show him the door! 

‘Gray temples at twenty?’—Yes! white, if we please; 

Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there’s nothing can 
freeze!” 

******** 

































































































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► 

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LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


75 


“Yes, we’re boys,—always playing with tongue or with pen,— 

And I sometimes have asked,—Shall we ever be men? 

Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay. 

Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? 

Then, here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 

The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! 

And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, 

Dear Father, take care of thy children, The Boys!” 

While Dr. Holmes’ poems teem with wit and humor, he is 
most sympathetic, and his strong personality is so mixed with his 
work that they cannot be separated. Some of his best works are 
Guardian Angel , Elsie Venner, and The Autocrat of the Break* 
fast Table. The last is probably the best example of his genius, 
and it is here that we see the scientific cultivation of his mind. 
While he is the autocrat, the professor, and the poet, he plays 
each part well and with distinct originality. 

Old Ironsides , a magnificent patriotic expression, is possibly 
more quoted than any other of the author’s poems. Written by 
the poet when he was but twenty-one years of age, it was the 
means of saving from destruction the old battle-ship Constitution. 

“O better that her shattered hulk 
Should sink beneath the wave! 

Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave: 

Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 

And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale!” 

The Last Leaf is a poem in which he mingles pathos with 
tender gayety. It is a general favorite. 

“I saw him once before, 

As he passed by the door, 

And again 

The pavement stones resound 
As he totters o’er the ground 
With his cane. 

They say that in his prime, 

Ere the pruning-knife of Time 
Cut him down, 

Not a better man was found 
By the Crier on his round 
Through the town. 


76 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


But now he walks the streets, 

And he looks at all he meets 
Sad and wan. 

And he shakes his feeble head, 

That it seems as if he said, 

‘They are gone.’ 

The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has prest 
In their bloom, 

And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb. 

My grandmamma has said,— 

Poor old lady, she is dead 
Long ago,— 

That he had a Roman nose, 

And his cheek was like a rose 
In the snow. 

But now his nose is thin, 

And it rests upon his chin 
Like a staff; 

And a crook is in his back, 

And a melancholy crack 
In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 
For me to sit and grin 
At him here; 

But the old three-cornered hat, 

And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer! 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 
In the spring, 

Let them smile, as I do now, 

At the old forsaken bough 
Where I cling.” 

Dr. Holmes was a real optimist and has done much to make 
cheerful the lives of others. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


77 



CHARLES DICKENS. 


HARLES DICKENS was born at Landport, in 
Portsea, England, February 7, 1812, and died in 
London, June 9, 1870. “The pen dropped from a 
dying hand, and the whole of an English-speaking 
race,” says Mr. Andrew Lang, “was startled and 
saddened by the news of the death of their friend and benefactor.” 
He is buried in Westminster Abbey, near Samuel Johnson, Gar¬ 
rick, Handel, Sheridan, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Dryden; from 
his pedestal Shakespeare “looks upon his place with kindly eyes.” 

His father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the Navy Pay 
Office of Portsmouth at the time of the author’s birth and was 
later transferred to Chatham. At home Charles learned to read 
and was then sent for a short time t^ school. Mrs. Dickens was a 
lady of energy and culture; by her Charles was taught the rudi¬ 
ments of Latin. When he was nine years old the whole family 
moved to London. The father became financially embarrassed 






78 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


and was imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Gaol. Then it was 
that young Charles was compelled to go to work in a blacking 
warehouse for six shillings a week. 

Many years later, Dickens looked back over that period as 
the dark hour of his life. It was dark because both his work and 
his associates were uncongenial. He suffered great unpleasantness 
while in that situation. So acute was the impression that it left on 
him that years afterward he could not recall it without weeping. 
He had, of course, no chance to learn the classics while there; but 
he could study the many varieties of life, odd and sad, laughter- 
moving and pitiful, that swarmed the streets in the poor quarter 
of London. Thus he gained much of the knowledge he applied 
so well in his writings. 

In his early years at home, Charles had devoured the con¬ 
tents of the home library. Some of the books read with so much 
interest were: Cil Bias, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, 
Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and The Arabian Nights. He 
was always an attentive student and, even in that early period of 
his life, he would become so absorbed in his reading that he seemed 
to live the life of his favorite characters. 

Better opportunities now presented themselves. His father’s 
affairs improved and enabled him to send the lad to school. Leav¬ 
ing school at fifteen, Charles entered a law office as clerk, but re¬ 
mained there only a short time. He learned shorthand and for 
two years reported law cases in Doctors’ Commons and other 
courts. Then, for five years, he was a reporter of political 
speeches in and out of Parliament. With his power of keen ob¬ 
servation, he was able to gather an abundance of information of 
which he made good use in his many novels. 

His life as an author began in 1834, when he wrote a series 
of sketches under the assumed name of “Boz.” Sketches fip Boz 
was published in 1836. In the same year he brought out his 
famous Pickwick Papers, with its inimitable Sam Weller, and he 
became instantly famous,—the most talked-of writer in England. 

Old Curiosity Shop, with its central figure of Little Nell, one 
of the most exquisite creations of modern fiction, was published 
in 1 840. Some of Dickens’ other novels are Oliver Twist, Nich¬ 
olas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Our Mutual Friend, Dombey 
and Son, and David Copperfield. The work last named was the 
author’s own favorite. It is supposed to be his autobiography and 
is possibly the most widely read. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


79 


The appreciation of the uplifting influence of the beautiful 
and noble character of Agnes is expressed by David Copperfield 
when he says: 

“And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger 
yet, these faces fade away. But, one face, shining on me, like a 
Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them 
and beyond them all. And that remains. 

I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside 
me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; 
but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me 
company. 

O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I 
close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from 
me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near 
me, pointing upward!” 

In 1 842 Charles Dickens visited America and, after his re¬ 
turn to England, wrote American Notes. The next year he pub¬ 
lished his Christmas Carol , a short story of Christmas. The au¬ 
thor says its object was “to awaken some loving and forbearing 
thoughts never out of season in a Christmas land.” The principal 
character in this book is Scrooge, who is described thus: 

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was 
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, 
covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no 
steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-con¬ 
tained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his 
old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stif¬ 
fened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke 
out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his 
head, and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his 
own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office 
in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No 
warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that 
blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent up¬ 
on its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weath¬ 
er didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, 
and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in 
only one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely, and 
Scrooge never did.” 

It was not long, however, before several spirits had com¬ 
pletely converted Scrooge to the Christmas feeling. From his 
eventful sleep he awakened a new man; he began to dress. 


80 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turn¬ 
ing them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, 
mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extrava¬ 
gance. 

‘I don’t know what to do!’ cried Scrooge, laughing and cry¬ 
ing in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of himself 
with his stockings. ‘I am as light as a feather, I am as happy 
as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as 
a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A Happy 
New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!’” 

* * * * * 

“ ‘I don’t know what day of the month it is,’ said Scrooge. 
‘I don’t know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don’t 
know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. 
I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!’ 

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing 
out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; 
ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, 
glorious, glorious! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. 
No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping 
for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight; heavenly sky; sweet 
fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious! 

‘What’s to-day?’ cried Scrooge, caning downward to a boy 
in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. 

‘Eh?’ returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. 

‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow?’ said Scrooge. 

‘To-day,’ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day’ ” 

Charles Dickens is considered a great reformer. In the 
twenty-eight schools he has described in his writings, he reveals 
nearly every form of bad training, resulting from selfishness and 
ignorance. He attacked many phases of wrong-doing and unjust 
treatment. Directing the attention of society to the evils in Eng¬ 
lish institutions, especially in the orphan asylums, charity schools, 
prisons, courts, and poor houses, he brought about many impor¬ 
tant reforms. He pleads for the child’s right and for a more kind¬ 
ly treatment of children. He taught, too, that loving sympathy is 
the most important trait in a true teacher. 

Dickens possessed strong imagination. He was a wonderful 
word painter, a close observer, a sympathetic writer with a keen 
sense of humor and pathos. 



















































































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LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


81 


ROBERT BROWNING. 


OBERT BROWNING was born at Camberwell, a 
suburb of London, May 7, 1812, and died in Venice, 
December 12, 1889. He is buried in Westminster 
Abbey. 

His father was a remarkable man. He was a great 
reader of the classics, Homer being a marked favorite. He him¬ 
self had extraordinary power for versifying, and taught Robert 
from his babyhood to make rimes. Robert Browning has de¬ 
clared that his father had more poetic genius than he. Possessed 
of ample means, and being extremely indulgent, the elder Browning 
gave his son every possible advantage. 

The mother of Browning, Carlyle says, was the true type 
of a Scottish gentlewoman.” She was delicate, kind, and gentle, 
and was an earnest Christian. It is said that Robert inherited his 
musical talent from her. He had great affection for his mother. 
One little bond maintained itself between his mother and himself 
as long as he lived with her,—he would never go to bed without 
first kissing her good-night. 

The poet’s education was mostly private. He was taught 
Latin, French, dancing, riding, fencing, drawing, and music. The 
love of poetry characterized him early in life. He was a great 
admirer of animals and had a passionate love for his home. At 
one time, when attending a private school where he remained only 
from Monday until Saturday, he would express himself as being 
sure that he would never survive those five days. A leaden cistern 
belonging to the school had the raised image of a face on its side. 
This cistern he chose as his burial place and converted the face 
into an epitaph, by passing his hand over and over it to a con¬ 
tinuous chant of, ‘‘In memory of unhappy Browning.” The cere¬ 
mony was repeated in his spare moments until the acute stage of 
his homesickness had passed away. 

Byron was the master influence upon the poet in his early 
days. When but twelve years old, Browning had written a 
volume of short poems in which was seen the Byronic influence. 



6 





82 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


No publisher could be found and the young poet destroyed the 
little manuscript in disgust. 

About the time he left school, in his fourteenth year, he was 
greatly influenced by the poets Shelley and Keats. The latter’s 
immortal poem, Ode to a Nightingale, always occupied the warm¬ 
est place in Browning’s heart. Being “passionately religious,” as 
he says of himself, he believed Shelley’s lines to have been 
prompted by the truest spiritual inspiration. 

In 1833 appeared his youthful poem, Pauline, which shows 
the Shelley influence. Paracelsus and Sordello followed. These 
poems were published at the expense of the poet’s father, to whom, 
Robert declared, he owed more for this alone than to any one else 
in the world. 

In 1846 Robert Browning was married to the talented 
Elizabeth Barrett, whose fame is widely known as a writer of 
classical English poetry. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese were 
written to him. To this gifted woman he was tenderly devoted; 
we find his love for her beautifully expressed in the lines, To a 
Star : 

“All that I know 
Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar) 

Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue; 

Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too, 

My star that dartles the red and the blue! 

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled, 

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 

Mine has opened its soul to me: therefore I love it.” 

Pippa Passes, an artistic little drama published in 1841, 
shows Browning’s philosophy as well as any one of his poems, 
and is probably the most easily understood. It opens with these 
lines: 

“Day! 

Faster and more fast, 

O’er night’s brim, day boils at last: 

Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim 
Where spurting and suppressed it lay, 

For not a froth-flake touched the rim 
Of yonder gap in the solid gray 
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


83 


But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 

Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, 

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.” 

Pippa is a little sick weaver and sings thus: 

“The year’s at the spring, 

And day’s at the morn; 

Morning’s at seven; 

The hillside’s dew-pearled; 

The lark’s on the wing; 

The snail’s on the thorn; 

God’s in his heaven— 

All’s right with the world.” 

Browning has written a number of short poems, some of 
which are The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Evelyn Hope, A Child's 
Story, and How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
Aix. The Ring and the Bool?, published in 1868, is his most ex¬ 
tensive poem and is written in blank verse. He begins it by telling 
briefly a story of murder and punishment. The same story is told 
again ten different times, from as many points of view. The grace 
and truthfulness with which this difficult task is achieved, as well 
as the psychological lesson that it teaches, make it of wonderful 
value to the close student. 

While Browning is not as easily understood as many of the 
great poets, his poems are forceful and positive; they are well 
worth the study they require, for humanity is Browning’s marked 
characteristic. 


84 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 



JAMES RUSSELL LOW ELL. 


AMES RUSSELL LOWELL was born in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, February 22, 1819, and died in that 
city August 12, 1891. Like Longfellow, Emerson, 
and Holmes, he was the son of a clergyman. He was 
descended from an English ancestry of eminent men 
and women, among whom were many clergymen, authors, and 
politicians. He was nurtured with romance and minstrelsy. Thus 
it was easy for him to be a poet. 

It is not a common thing for a person to be born and to live 
one’s entire life in the same house, but such was the case with 
Lowell. Elmwood , the beautiful old New England mansion, 
situated in Cambridge, near Mount Auburn, was always his home 
and it was there that he spent his life. The nearest neighbor to 
Elmwood in 1 825 was William Wells, who kept a boys’ school. 







LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


85 


and here the poet received most of his early education. He en¬ 
tered Harvard College in his sixteenth year and was graduated in 
1838. Two years later he finished a law course. He practiced 
law for a few years, but at the same time wrote for magazines and, 
in 1841, published a small volume of poems entitled A Year’s 
Life. He established the Pioneer Magazine , to which Whittier, 
Hawthorne, and Poe contributed, in 1843. Mr. Lowell was 
married to Maria White in 1844. 

His domestic life at Elmwood was beautifully ideal. The 
only bar to its perfect happiness was the fear that it would not 
long last. Mrs. Lowell was never strong. In 1851 the poet took 
her abroad in the hope of benefiting her health, spending a year 
in Switzerland, France, and England. She died in 1853, the 
year after they returned. On the day Mrs. Lowell died, a child 
was born to Mr. Longfellow. This event occasioned the writing 
of The Two Angels by that great poet, who sent it to his friend. 
It is a touching expression of his sincere sympathy. 

The Biglow Papers first appeared in 1848, during the Mex¬ 
ican War. The object of these papers was to oppose the exten¬ 
sion of slavery. They may be regarded as one of the unique 
writings of that age. Here he employs Yankee dialect, the rustic 
Yankee then being a reality. 

“Thrash away: You’ll hev to rattle 
On them kittle-drums o’ yourn; 

’Tain’t a knowin’ kind o’ cattle 
That is ketched with mouldy corn.” 

We find in The Biglow Papers keen wit, cutting sarcasm, 
ridicule, and often lines of sentiment. It is possible that the poet 
reached the loftiest expression of his genius in his Commemora¬ 
tion Ode. Among My Books and My Study Windows are two 
of the best volumes of his essays and sketches. Lowell’s poems 
show the influence of his wide reading of the English poets, par¬ 
ticularly of Tennyson, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and Cole¬ 
ridge. 

The Vision of Sir Launfal is one of the most beautiful les¬ 
sons of charity ever written in rime. The summer and winter 
scenes pictured in this poem are fascinating. June meant much to 
Lowell. i , 


86 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 

Then Heaven tries Earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays. 

Whether we look, or whether we listen, 

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 

Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.” 

This poem is perhaps the most widely taught of all the au¬ 
thor’s works. Its theme is of true charity and teaches that our 
personal self must be forgotten before we can realize an ideal kind¬ 
ness to others. 

The Present Crisis is a strong prophetic poem, the most com¬ 
monly quoted of any of his poems. 

“New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 
uncouth; 

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast 
of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pil¬ 
grims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 
winter Sea, 

Nor attempt the Future’s portals with the Past’s blood-rusted 
key.” 

Lowell was a true lover of nature, an ardent and loyal 
citizen, a good critic, and a beautiful poet. 



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LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


87 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


quite young could play almost any instrument without in¬ 
struction. He entered Oglethorpe College as a Sophomore when 
but fourteen, having studied one year while employed in the post- 
office at home. He was graduated, when eighteen, with the high¬ 
est honors of the class. He was then made a teacher in the col¬ 
lege but, the civil war breaking out, he entered the army. He went 
as a private, and would not accept promotion because that would 
separate him from his brother, Clifford, to whom he was greatly 
devoted. 

He was in the smoke of many of the great battles near Rich¬ 
mond, was captured, and for five months was kept in Point Look¬ 
out Prison. Here he found his music a great consolation, and 
played his flute to while away the long weary hours. The music 
in his soul harmonized with the beautiful strains of his instrument, 
and had a strengthening and soothing influence on the poet. 

He was never strong and the privations and exposures of 
the war life stamped consumption permanently on his frail consti¬ 
tution. His marriage to Miss Mary Day, of Macon, was con¬ 
sidered by him the happiest event of his life. This was exempli¬ 
fied by his great devotion to his wife and by his entire home life. 

Tiger Lilies , a novel in which he relates his war experiences, 
was published in 1867. He studied law and practiced with his 
father; but his failing health and his great love for his two arts, 
music and literature, compelled him to abandon the law. He 
moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1873, and played first flute in 
the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. From this time on he had a 
hard struggle against fate, but worked with an unfaltering will. 

A poem entitled Corn , published in Lippincott’s Magazine 
in 1875, was his first recognized great poem. 


iDNEY LANIER was born February 3, 1842, in Ma¬ 
con, Georgia, and died in the mountains of North Caro¬ 
lina, September 7, 1881. He was of Huguenot descent. 
He was born with remarkable talent for music and while 






88 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


“So thou dost mutually leaven 
Strength of earth with grace of heaven; 

So thou dost marry new and old 
Into a one of higher mould; 

So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, 

The dark and bright, 

And many a heart-perplexing opposite, 

And so, 

Akin by blood to high and low, 

Fitly thou playest out thy poet’s part, 

Richly expending thy bruised heart. 

In equal care to nourish lord in hall or beast in stall; 
Thou took’st from all that thou might’st give to all.” 

The Symphony was published also in 1875; The Psalm of 
the West appeared in 1876, and The Marshes of Glynn in 1879. 

“Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing withholding 
and free 

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the 
sea! 

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, 

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily 
won 

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.” 

Next to Poe, Sidney Lanier is without question the greatest 
poet the South has produced. His poems are original and rich in 
alliteration. He was a staunch American and a beautiful South¬ 
ern singer—a combination of genius and noble character, with 
sweet strains of music blended with the purest and highest ideal 
imagination. 










LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


89 


JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 


yer of Greenfield and planned to have James follow in 
his footsteps. James, however, thought otherwise. When the 
Civil War broke out Mr. Riley enlisted for three years. Return¬ 
ing home at the close of the war, he found his tow-headed boy, 
whom he had expected to find preparing himself for his father’s 
profession, very much given to fishing in the Brandywine and with 
a strongly acquired habit of chewing tobacco, in which he was 
the admiration of his chums. 

“Tired o’ fishin’—itired o’ fun—line out slack and slacker; 

All you want in all the world’s a little more tobacker.” 

Young Riley found the surroundings of the little Red School- 
house, with an atmosphere laden with fragrance of clover blos¬ 
soms, much more congenial to him than the text books. His early 
education in books was limited, but there seems to be no limit to 
the wealth of nature’s teachings which he acquired and has pre¬ 
served in song and story. 

Riley had many early ambitions, his first being a longing to 
become a baker and have the privilege of eating all his own “good 
things.’’ When his baker fever was over, he thought he would 
like “the show business.’’ He and a friend, George Carr, estab¬ 
lished a “show’’ in a neighbor’s barn. The admission was twen¬ 
ty-five pins and James himself paid strict attention to the receipts. 
In case a pin was bent in the least, it had to be replaced by a 
straight one before admission was possible. At the close of the 
season, the treasury contained three quarts of pins. The youthful 
company took in another member, divided the pins, and then dis¬ 
banded. His next ambition was to be a great artist. In com¬ 
pany with James McClannahan, whom Riley declared was one 
of the brightest stars of this industry, he began his career as a 


AMES WHITCOMB RILEY was born in Greenfield, 
Indiana, in 1853, in a small cottage facing the old Na¬ 
tional Road between Washington and St. Louis. He 
is of Quaker parentage. His father was an able law- 



90 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


sign painter. To this period of his life the story of “the blind sign 
painter” belongs. When business was not flourishing, McClanna- 
han conceived the clever idea of announcing that work would be 
done by a blind painter. Riley, who possessed a remarkable 
talent as an actor, played well the part of the sightless man and 
often had several hundred people watching the marvelous work 
being done by the blind artist! 

After his sign painting experience, he began to work for 
Greenfield and Anderson newspapers, often writing advertisements 
in doggerel verses. During his connection with the Anderson pa¬ 
per, he wrote the poem, Leonainie , in careful imitation of Edgar 
Allan Poe. It purported to be a posthumous poem which had 
been recently found. It was published in the Kokomo Dispatch. 
The attempt was most successful; the work was accepted as gen¬ 
uine and created a sensation. When, however, the ruse was dis¬ 
covered, Riley was most severely denounced for trying to gain no¬ 
toriety by dishonest means. In consequence he lost his position. 
The poet says that this was the most melancholy experience of his 
life; but, as with Oliver Goldsmith when he was made famous 
by the appearance of The Traveler , a brighter day was dawning 
for the Hoosier poet. 

Judge Martindale, of the Indianapolis Journal, offered him 
an editorial position, which he accepted. It was at this time that 
he received a letter from Longfellow, who had not failed to recog¬ 
nize the real merit of the struggling poet’s pen and who, with his 
great breadth of human sympathy, had readily acknowledged it. 
Riley says, “A helping hand and a kindly word, coming when I 
most had need of them, gave me renewed courage and enthusiasm, 
and soon I was working harder than ever.” 

He published a series of poems under the assumed name of 
“Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone County.” These were well re¬ 
ceived by the public and soon the poet’s first volume of poems, en¬ 
titled The Old Swimmin -Hole and ’Leven More Poems , was 
published. The book was an overwhelming success; it was im¬ 
possible to fill all the orders sent in for it. Thus, after years of 
disappointments, struggle, and hard work, James Whitcomb Riley’s 
efforts were crowned with success and his name was forever fixed 
among American men of letters. 

Now that the poet was prosperous, there came a delightful 
illustration of the noble spirit he possessed. The world had not 
gone well with his father, who, despite all honest efforts, was com- 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


91 


pelled to give up his old home to satisfy his creditors. James, “the 
remarkable son,” as his father called him, sent his parents on a 
pleasure trip to California. During their six weeks’ visit he bought 
back the home and arranged its furnishings as of old. On the 
return of the old couple their hearts were made happy when they 
were told that their home was restored and that they might spend 
there the remainder of their days. 

Mr. Riley has published many volumes of poems since The 
Old Swimmin-Hole. 

“Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! When I last saw the place, 

The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; 
The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot 
Whare the old divin’-log lays sunk and fergot. 

And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be— 

But never again will theyr shade shelter me! 

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, 

And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin’-hole.” 

The names of some of his books are Rhymes of Childhood, 
After whiles. Home Folks, Green Fields and Running Brooks , 
Poems Here at Home, Old Fashioned Roses, and Morning. 

As long as patriotic Americans continue to have memory, 
they will cherish the words of The Old Man and Jim. 

“Think of a private, now, perhaps, 

We’ll say like Jim, 

’At’s dumb clean up to the shoulder-straps— 

And the old man jes’ wrapped up in him! 

Think of him—with the war plum’ through, 

And the glorious old Red-White-and-Blue 
A-laughin’ the news down over Jim, 

And the old man, bendin’ over him— 

The surgeon turnin’ away with tears 
’At hadn’t leaked fer years and years, 

As the hand of the dyin’ boy clung to 
His father’s, the old voice in his ears,— 

‘Well, good-by, Jim: 

Take keer of yourse’f!’” 

For simplicity and sentiment there is nothing more delicate 
in the English language than An Old Sweetheart of Mine. 

“I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress 
She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress 
With the written declaration that, ‘as surely as the vine 
Grew round the stump,’ she loved me—that old sweetheart of 
mine. 


92 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand, 

As we used to talk together of the future we had planned— 
When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do 
But write the tender verses that she set the music to: 

When we should live together in a cozy little cot 
Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, 

Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine, 
And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine: 

When I should be her lover forever and a day, 

And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray; 
And we should be so happy that when either’s lips were dumb 
They would not smile in Heaven till the other’s kiss had come.” 

On December 28, 1905, the Hoosier Poet was tendered an 
ovation in Indianapolis by the State Teachers’ Association. The 
enthusiastic welcome he received almost overcame him. He suc¬ 
ceeded, however, in entertaining the vast audience most royally 
with some of his best selections. Other speakers were Dr. Edwin 
Holt Hughes, President of DePauw University; Hon. Albert J. 
Beveridge, Senator from Indiana; Charles R. Williams, editor of 
the Indianapolis Nervs; Meredith Nicholson, the author, and the 
brilliant orator, Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier- 
Journal. The entire symposium of tribute was probably one of 
the most remarkable ever given to an American in his own life¬ 
time and “to his face.” 

Naturalness is Mr. Riley’s most marked characteristic. It 
is to be hoped he may long live to enjoy the love and admiration 
of the thousands upon thousands whom he has charmed with his 
musical verses. Let who will make Indiana’s laws, James Whit¬ 
comb Riley has made her lays, and has made them well. 

































RcVu 











LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


93 


RUDYARD KIPLING. 


UDYARD KIPLING was born in Bombay, India, 
December 31, 1863. His father, an Englishman, 
was educated in the art school of Kensington, Eng¬ 
land. He was sent by the British Government to In¬ 
dia as Professor of Architecture and Sculpture at Bom¬ 
bay. He is described as being “a clever man of artistic tem¬ 
perament, but somewhat erratic.” Kipling’s mother, daughter of 
the Reverend G. B. Macdonald, a Methodist minister at Endon, 
England, is of Scotch-Irish descent. She is quite talented and, 
even when a girl, wrote charmingly in prose and poetry. Thus 
we see that Rudyard inherited both artistic and poetic talent from 
his parents. 

As a child he showed a deep interest in reading and was 
keen of perception. When he was twelve years of age, he visited, 
in company with his father, the Paris Exposition, after which he 
was placed in the United States Service College near the town 
of Westward Ho, on Bristol Channel. 

He is described by one who was his schoolmate in 1879 as 
having then had small black eyes, and wearing heavy gold-bowed 
spectacles—the most noticeable thing about him. He was at that 
time very brown from his life in India, having thick black curly 
hair, strong jaws, large white teeth, and a fine forehead. He al¬ 
ways walked with his fists crammed in his coat pockets, was care¬ 
less in dress, and loved to fish. He enjoyed the strict rules of the 
college, being keen enough to see their real benefit. Kipling says 
their school motto was, ‘‘Fear God, Honour the King.” 

While in school he was editor-in-chief of the Chronicle, a 
school paper, which experienced some stormy times when the edi¬ 
tor wrote accounts of the lower classmen. During his college 
days he received a gold medal as a prize for writing an essay on 
England and Her African Colonies. 

In 1883 he went back to India and engaged in newspaper 
work; first on the Lahore Journal and afterward on the Civil and 







94 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


Military) Gazette at Lahore. His former experience on the 
Chronicle was now of no little service to him. 

In his story of The Man Who Would Be King he gives a 
humorous description of his numerous duties as editor. He re¬ 
quested the Duke of Connaught, Commander of the North-West¬ 
ern District of India, to allow him to live with the army of the 
frontier so that he might write up “Tommy Atkins.’’ The Duke 
readily granted this request and thus he was enabled to familiarize 
himself with East India types, such as Danny Deever and Mul - 
vany , whose character sketches he first published in the Gazette. 
He had previously published two small volumes. Schoolboy Lyrics 
and Echoes. 

Mr. Kipling describes his first book, Departmental Ditties, 
thus: “There was built a sort of a book, a lean oblong docket, 
wirestitched, to imitate a D. O. government envelope, printed on 
one side only, bound in brown paper, and secured with red tape. 
It was addressed to all heads of departments and all government 
officials, and among a pile of papers would have deceived a clerk 
of twenty years’ service. In a short time, every copy was sold. 

Kipling’s life and service in India afforded him every oppor¬ 
tunity to study both the country and the people he has so success¬ 
fully pictured in poetry and prose. The soldier’s life is intensely 
interesting to him, and many of his poems and stories are written 
about it. His Barrack Room Ballads, published in 1 899, con¬ 
tains Danny Deever, Tommy, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, and Mandalay. 

“Ship me somewheres east of Suez where the best is like the 
worst. 

Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can 
raise a thirst; 

For the temple bells are callin’, and it’s there that I would be— 

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea— 

On the road to Mandalay, 

Where the old Flotilla lay, 

With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to 
Mandalay! 

Oh, the road to Mandalay, 

Where the flyin’-fishes play, 

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 
’crost the Bay!” 

Gunga Din (the bhisti or water carrier) is quite popular 
with the author’s English friends. 


LITTLE LIFE STORIES 


95 


“I sha’n’t forgit the night 
When I dropped be’ind the fight 
With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been. 

I was chokin’ mad with thirst, 

An’ the man that spied me first 

Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. 

’E lifted up my ’ead, 

An’ ’e plugged me where I bled, 

An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water—green: 

It was crawlin’ an’ it stunk, 

But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, 

I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. 

It was ‘Din! Din! Din! 

’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen; 

’E’s chawin’ up the ground an’ ’e’s kickin’ all around: 

For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’” 

In 1891 Mr. Kipling co-operated with Mr. Wolcott Bales- 
tier in writing The Naulahku, and in the following year he mar¬ 
ried Mr. Balestier’s sister in London, coming to America and 
building himself a beautiful house in Brattleboro, Vermont. He 
gave to his home the name of the book, Naulahka. 

While residing in America, he was requested by Mary 
Mapes Dodge to contribute some of his animal stories to the St. 
Nicholas magazine. This was the origin of the Jungle Books, 
probably of all his works the most widely read by children. After 
a short residence in America he sold his home in Vermont and 
went back to England, where he now resides. 

It is as a story-teller that Mr. Kipling is best known. Some 
of his stories are. The Light That Failed, The Man Who Was, 
The Mark of the Beast, The End of the Passage, Without Benefit 
of Clergy, Phantom Rickshaw, Beyond the Pale, The Seven Seas, 
Plain Tales From the Hills, Soldiers Three, Captains Courageous, 
Kim, and Wee Willie Winkic. The last is a child’s story. 

Recessional, a prayer poem, was written at the request of the 
London Times for a Jubilee poem. Mr. Kipling says: '‘This 
poem gave me more trouble than anything I ever wrote.” It is, 
however, his most famous poem. 

“For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard— 

All valiant dust that builds on dust, 

And guarding calls not Thee to guard, 

For frantic boast and foolish word, 

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!” 


96 


LITERARY APPRECIATIONS 


This poem’s noble refrain is universally admired: 

“Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, 

Lest we forget—Lest we forget!” 

Kipling makes his pictures so vivid and real that his readers 
as they follow his descriptions almost choke of thirst, smell pow¬ 
der, and die of heat. He is a staunch Royalist, still adhering to 
the motto of his early school days. 


TABLE OF AUTHORS 


Most Frequently Referred to in a General Study 
of English Literature. 


Abbreviations: b, born; d, died; Eng:., English; Araer., American . 

Joseph Addison: b. May 1, 1672; d. June 17, 1719; Eng.; Essayist, 
Poet. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: b. Nov. 11, 1836; d. May 19, 1907; Amer.; 
Poet, Novelist. 

Matthew Arnold: b. Dec. 24, 1822; d. Apr. 15, 1888; Eng.; 
Essayist, Poet. 

Jane Austen: b. Dec. 16, 1775; d. July 18, 1817; Eng.; Novelist. 
Alfred Austin: b. May 30, 1835; Eng.; Poet. 

Francis Bacon: b. Jan. 22, 1561; d. Apr. 9, 1626; Eng.; Essayist. 
James Matthew Barrie: b. May 9, 1860; Scotch; Novelist. 
Richard Doddridge Blackmore: b. 1825; d. Jan., 1900; Eng.; 
Novelist. 

William Blake: b. Nov. 28, 1757; d. Aug. 12, 1827; Eng.; Poet. 
Charlotte Bronte: b. Apr. 21, 1816; d. Mar. 31, 1855; Eng; 
Novelist. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: b. Mar. 6, 1806; d. June 30, 1861; 
Eng.; Poet. 

Robert Browning: b. May 7, 1812; d. Dec. 12, 1889; Eng.; Poet. 
William Cullen Bryant: b. Nov. 3, 1794; d. June 12, 1878; Amer.; 
Poet. 

John Bunyan: b. Nov., 1628; d. Aug. 31, 1688; Eng.; Allegorist. 
Robert Burns: b. Jan. 25, 1759; d. July 21, 1796; Scotch; Poet. 
George Gordon, Lord Byron: b. Jan. 22, 1788; d. Apr. 19, 1824; 
Eng.; Poet. 

Thomas Campbell: b. July 27, 1777; d. June 15, 1844; Scotch; 
Poet. 

Thomas Carlyle: b. Dec. 4, 1795; d. Feb. 5, 1881; Eng.; Essayist. 
Alice Cary: b. Apr. 26, 1820; d. Feb. 12, 1871; Amer.; Poet. 
Phoebe Cary: b. Sept. 4, 1824; d. July 31, 1871; Amer.; Poet. 
Geoffrey Chaucer: b. 1340 (?); d. Oct. 25, 1400; Eng.; Poet. 
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (‘Mark Twain”): b. Nov. 30, 1835; 

Amer.; Novelist, Essayist (Humorist). 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: b. Oct. 21, 1772; d. July 25, 1834; 
Eng.; Poet. 

James Fenimore Cooper: b. Sept. 15, 1789; d. Sept. 14, 1851; 
Amer.; Novelist. 




11 


TABLE OF AUTHORS 


William Cowper: b. Nov. 15, 1731; d. Apr. 25, 1800; Eng.; Poet. 
Daniel Defoe: b. 1659-60 (7); d. Apr. 26, 1731; Eng.; Novelist. 
Thomas De Quincey: b. Aug. 15, 1785; d. Dec. 8, 1859; Eng.; 
Essayist. 

Charles Dickens: b. Feb 7, 1812; d. June 9, 1870; Eng.; Novelist. 
John Dryden: b. Aug. 9(7), 1631; d. May 1, 1700; Eng.; Poet. 
“George Eliot.” See Marian Evans. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: b. May 25, 1803; d. Apr. 27, 1882; Amer.; 
Essayist, Poet. 

Marian Evans (“George Eliot”): b. Nov. 22, ±819; d. Dec. 22, 1880; 
Eng.; Novelist. 

Eugene Field: b. Sept. 2, 1850; d. Nov. 4, 1895; Amer.; Poet, 
Humorist. 

Henry Fielding: b. Apr. 22, 1707; d. Oct. 8, 1754; Eng.; Novelist. 
Benjamin Franklin: b. Jan. 17, 1706; d. Apr. 17, 1790; Amer.; 
Statesman. 

Philip Freneau: b. Jan. 2, 1752; d. Dec. 18, 1832; Amer.; Poet. 

Oliver Goldsmith: b. Nov. 10, 1728; d. Apr. 4, 1775; Eng.; Poet, 
Novelist, Dramatist. 

Thomas Gray: b. Dec. 26, 1717; d. July 30, 1771; Eng.; Poet. 
Francis Bret Harte: b. Aug. 25, 1839; d. May 5, 1902; Amer.; 
Poet, Novelist. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne: b. July 4, 1804; d. May 19, 1864; Amer.; 
Novelist. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes: b. Aug. 29, 1809; d. Oct. 7, 1894; Poet, 
Novelist, Essayist. 

Thomas Hood: b. May 23, 1799; d. May 3, 1845; Eng.; Poet. 
William Dean Howells: b. Mar. 1, 1839; Amer.; Novelist, Es¬ 
sayist. 

Jean Ingelow: b. 1820; d. July 20, 1897; Eng.; Poet. 

Washington Irving: b. Apr. 3, 1783; d. Nov. 28, 1859; Amer.; 
Biographer, Humorist. 

Henry James: b. Apr. 15, 1843; Amer.; Novelist, Essayist. 

Samuel Johnson: b. Sept. 18, 1709; d. Dec. 13, 1784; Eng.; 
Lexicographer, Moralist. 

Ben Jonson: b. 1572 or -3; d. Aug. 6, 1637; Eng.; Poet, Dram¬ 
atist. 

John Keats: b. Oct. 29, 1795; d. Feb. 23, 1821; Eng.; Poet. 

Charles Kingsley: b. June 12, 1819; d. Jan. 23, 1875; Eng.; 
Novelist. 

Rudyard Kipling: b. Dec. 31, 1865; Eng.; Poet, Novelist. 

Charles Lamb: b. Feb. 10, 1775; d. Dec. 27, 1834; Eng.; Essayist, 
Humorist. 


TABLE OF AUTHORS 


iii 


Sidney Lanier: b. Feb. 3, 1842; d. Sept. 7, 1881; Amer.; Poet. 
Abraham Lincoln: b. Feb. 12, 1809; d. Apr. 15, 1865; Amer.; 
Statesman. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: b. Feb. 27, 1807; d. Mar. 24, 1882; 
Amer.; Poet. 

James Russell Lowell: b. Feb. 22, 1819; d. Aug. 12, 1891; Amer.; 
Poet, Essayist. 

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay: b. Oct. 25, 1800; d. Dec. 28, 
1859; Eng.; Essayist. 

Christopher Marlowe: b. Feb. 23 (?), 1564; d. June 1, 1593; 
Eng.; Dramatist, Poet. 

George Meredith: b. 1828; Eng.; Novelist* Poet. 

John Milton: b. Dec. 9, 1608; d. Nov. 8, 1674; Eng.; Poet. 
Thomas Moore: b. May 28, 1779; d. Feb. 25, 1852; Irish; Poet. 
Sir Thomas More: b. Feb. 7, 1478; d. July 6, 1535; Eng.; Poet, 
Statesman. 

John Boyle O’Reilly: b. June 28, 1844; d. Aug. 10, 1890; Irish- 
Amer.; Poet, Journalist. 

Edgar Allan Poe: b. Jan. 19, 1809; d. Oct. 7, 1859; Amer.; Poet, 
Romancer, Critic. 

Alexander Pope: b. May 21, 1688; d. May 30, 1744; Eng.; Poet. 
James Whitcomb Riley: b. 1854; Amer.; Poet. 

Theodore Roosevelt: b. Oct. 27, 1858; Amer.; Statesman, Biog¬ 
rapher, Historian. 

John Ruskin: b. Feb. 8, 1819; d. Jan. 20, 1900; Eng.; Art Critic, 
Moralist, Essayist. 

Sir Walter Scott: b. Aug. 15, 1771; d. Sept. 21, 1832; Scotch; 
Poet, Novelist. 

William Shakespeare: b. Apr. (23 or 24?), 1564; d. Apr. 23, 
1616; Eng.; Dramatist, Poet. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley: b. Aug. 4, 1792; d. July 8, 1822; Eng.; 
Poet. 

Edward Rowland Sill: b. Apr. 29, 1841; d. Feb. 27, 1887; Amer.; 
Poet. 

Robert Southey: b. Aug. 12, 1774; d. Mar. 21, 1843; Eng.; Poet. 
Edmund Spenser: b. 1552 (?); d. Jan. 16, 1599; Eng.; Poet. 
Edmund Clarence Stedman: b. Oct. 8, 1833; d. Jan. 18, 1908; 
Amer.; Poet. 

Laurence Sterne: b. Nov. 24, 1713; d. Mar. 18, 1768; Eng.; 

Novelist. 

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson: b. Nov. 13, 1850; d. Dec. 8, 
1894; Scotch; Novelist, Poet. 

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe: b. June 14, 1812; d. Aug. 22, 
1886; Amer.; Novelist. 


iv 


TABLE OF AUTHORS 


Jonathan Swift: b. Nov. 30, 1667; d. Oct. 19, 1745; Irish; 

Satirist. 

Algernon Charles Swinburne: b. Apr. 5, 1837; Eng.; Poet. 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: b. Aug. 5, 1809; d. Oct. 6, 1892; Eng.; 
Poet. 

William Makepeace Thackeray: b. July 18, 1811; d. Dec. 24, 
1863; Eng.; Novelist. 

“Mark Twain.” See Samuel Langhorne Clemens. 

Izaak Walton: b. 1593; d. Dec. 15, 1683; Eng.; Author of “Corn- 
pleat Angler.” 

George Washington: b. Feb. 22, 1732; d. Dec. 14, 1799; Amer.; 
Statesman. 

Daniel Webster: b. Jan. 18, 1782; d. Oct. 24, 1852; Amer.; Ora¬ 
tor, Statesman. 

Walt Whitman: b. May 31, 1819; d. Mar. 26, 1892; Amer.; Poet. 
John Greenleaf Whittier; b. Dec. 17, 1807; d. Sept. 7, 1892; 

Amer.; Poet. 

William Wordsworth: b. Apr. 7, 1770; d. Apr. 23, 1850; Eng.; 
Poet. 

William Butler Yeats: b. June 13, 1865; Irish; Poet. 
















































































































































































































































































































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